It’s not widely known that the Nazis used human beings as fuel for the ovens of their death camps. Body fat will burn adequately, and the Nazis had a surplus in the form of overweight individuals newly arrived at the camps. A few of these unfortunates – most of them women – would be murdered early in the morning and set alight. The day’s total of victims of gassing, starvation, disease, and brutality would then be thrown on top. If necessary, some could be set aside for use if more heat was required.

This fact is overlooked in many histories of the Holocaust because – obviously enough – it goes beyond the disgusting and into the demonic. (This is a case where delicacy has worked against true decency: many Holocaust deniers take advantage of this oversight by arguing that the Nazis lacked the fuel to burn their victims. It’s usually put in the form of “It takes 7.3 liters of gas to burn a body. Where did they get all that gas?” – often with an identical little flick of the hand, as if you’re being presented with a full can of gas. It’s probably the most convincing factoid that such people have in their arsenals.)

This is brought to mind by news that human bodies – in the form of aborted and miscarried infants discarded as “medical waste” – have been burned both in the U.S. and U.K. for purposes of power generation.

In the U.K., this involved over 15,000 infants burned to heat National Health Service hospitals. (It goes without saying that it would be the NHS, the most inhuman department of the British government.) This practice continued for two years before it became public in late March and was immediately banned as “totally unacceptable.” Women were told that their babies had been “cremated”.

In the U.S., it was Oregon, the state that also pioneered euthanasia, that was burning babies for fuel. Early this week the Catholic Herald of British Columbia exposed a program that shipped medical waste – including dead children – to an energy plant in Brooks, Oregon. After being publicized by right-to-life outlets – above all, LifeNews.com – the practice was halted on Wednesday.

Two points leap immediately to mind: the first is that abortion, one of the few true sacraments of the left, corrodes and degrades everything it touches. This is far beyond what even the harshest critics predicted back in 1973, though in hindsight, it seems inevitable.  

The second is, what kind of soulless automatons were involved in carrying out these programs? The state seems to have no problem finding such types when it needs them. Will any of them pay any price at all? I wouldn't hold my breath.

One of the greatest crimes of the monster tyrannies of the 20th century – not just the Third Reich alone – was the reduction of human beings to material, to resources that could be discarded or used as the state saw fit. The Nazi use of individuals as fuel was the ultimate expression of this, and the same is true of the British and American “children as fuel” programs. The liberalism of the 21st century shares this factor with the social-nationalist dictatorships, and not all the butterflies, rainbows, and unicorns strewn around by its supporters can camouflage this. Liberalism is truly the road to the abyss.