Rulers of the World

Because they suspected a fellow prisoner of war of writing a "traitorous" note, five sullen and shifty-eyed Nazis had brutally clubbed him to death; an Army court-martial had swiftly found them guilty. At Fort Leavenworth last week they were hanged for their crime.

For seven U.S. soldier-executioners it was a grim assignment. First they went to a makeshift gallows, built in an elevator shaft, and practiced with a sandbag dummy. Then, shortly after midnight one night, they carried out the verdict.

First to go was Walter Beyer, a 32-year-old sergeant still wearing parts of his Afrika Korps uniform. As he heard the sentence read and translated by an interpreter, his face was drawn, his eyes flicked nervously from one face to another. But he held his chin high. Said he: "I can't see why this is being done to me." When they placed the black hood over his head, he pivoted on his heel, marched smartly to the edge of the shaft, maintained his military bearing to the end.

Another of the condemned men started to say, "A wrong is being--" then his voice broke. He was silent as the hood was adjusted.

The others had nothing to say. But their military behavior was perfect; not a heel dragged.

Few days later, despite the Army's protestations that all is reasonably well in the prisoner-of-war camps, authorities at Fort Leavenworth hanged two more Nazis for the same kind of crime--murder of a fellow prisoner.

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