A Dark Lord and His Ring of Power

Per Scriptum E. Wesley – Mackinac Center Intern

In stark contrast to many landmarks of liberty left behind by past civilizations, some cultural trappings belong on the ash heap of history. This Nazi ring is one of them. Adolf Hitler has long been likened to a dark lord, but it wasn’t until I saw this ring that I knew him to be a lord of rings.

As the photo shows, this ring would not fit the average adult. It was meant to seduce rather than decorate. Intentionally, the Nazis forged it for the delicate finger and soul of a gullible youth. It is a child’s ring.

My blood ran cold for a moment as I gazed at this speck of silver. I marveled with Boromir how strange that I should “suffer so much fear and doubt for so small a thing. So small a thing!” A black rider might say this “least of rings… is but a trifle” to all the horrors of the Nazi regime, but Hitler knew that if his empire were ever to last one thousand years, he needed in Gandalf’s words the young to “cover all the lands in a second darkness.” The loudest engines of war and torment could not sound tyranny with more discordant notes than this trifle. A whisper of evil sometimes chills the spine faster than the trumpet of pandemonium.

Deceived by apparent beauty and ceremony, the little bearer of this ring knew not that tyrants linked her childhood with the mass murderer of the Western world. Providentially, this sad time would only last twelve years instead of one thousand, thanks to the perseverance of the Allied efforts and the blessings of God. As Winston Churchill rightly said, “upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilization.” Churchill himself could not gain a panoramic view over the Mordor of Nazi Germany when he spoke these words, but seventy years later we may piece together wisps of the smoldering story. Sic Semper Tyrannis.