Rupert Cornwell: We must never forget the evil inspired by Hitler's regime

Why bother with these doddering, pathetic old men, some of whom surely are dead and the youngest of whom now are in their mid-80s, when witnesses to their crimes of more than 60 years ago are themselves either no longer alive, or their memories have been hopelessly corroded by age?

That familiar question arises again with the latest list of most wanted Nazis, published by the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, and headed by the indubitably evil Aribert Heim, the SS doctor who practised at the Mauthausen concentration camp, but who is now 93 years old (assuming he did not die, as some claim, in Argentina in 1993).

In fact, the reasons for bothering with such vanished or un-prosecuted war criminals grow stronger if anything, not weaker, as their ranks grow ever thinner. Yes, we have enough evil much closer to our own time than these fag ends of a conflict that ended in 1945, of which you have to be close to 70 to have any direct recollection, and whose relevance to our post-Communist, terrorism-obsessed world of the early 21st-century seems tenuous at best. But even for Europeans whose grandparents were not even born in 1945, World War II (and the crimes it begat) are as relevant as ever. Everyone knows the dictum of Santayana, and the fate that befalls people who cannot remember the past. The public pursuit of Nazi war criminals – however few, ancient and harmless they may now be – helps us remember the past.

It is a past that still shape the attitudes of a modern Europe that in America at least is often accused of wimpish pacifism and a refusal to fight to defend its values. But if Europe is averse to war, it is precisely because of the folk memory of World War II, the bloodiest war in human history. It destroyed a continent, brought with it the Holocaust, and spawned a few individuals like Aribert Heim. Thus to keep the spotlight on Nazi war criminals keeps the spotlight on those broader horrors in an era when people, especially younger people, know little and care little about history. The real issue is not whether pursuing Nazi criminals is a waste of time. It is whether, once actuarial calculations dictate that the last fugitive Nazis are no more, the pursuit of more modern war criminals will be equally implacable. All too often, the definition of war crimes is tainted by victors' justice. No one disputes the enormity of the Holocaust. But the Nazis were a simple target. Germany was totally defeated, and the victorious allies could make common cause in their outrage. Few by contrast have paid for the atrocities wrought by Stalin's Russia or Mao's China. And, for that matter, what about the British and American bombing of Dresden?

Ideally, the half century-long hunt for Nazi war criminals should be a deterrent and a lesson for those responsible for atrocities in every other war – in the Balkans, in sub-Saharan West Africa, in the Middle East and elsewhere – that their crimes too will never be forgotten.

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