NATIONS HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL: Hitler, the Holocaust and War
>By Richard A. Koenigsberg
>
>
>COLLEGE INSTRUCTORS may receive a free copy of this important book, which
>changes forever our understand of the Holocaust—and of warfare. Simply respond
>to this email indicating you will request that your library order a copy.
> Pages: 136 pages
>Publisher:
> Library of Social Science
>Author:
> Richard A. Koenigsberg
>
>Paperback
>ISBN: 978-0915042234
>List Price: $39.99
>
>Hardcover
>ISBN: 978-0915042241
>List Price: $45.95
> For information on purchasing this book through Amazon at a special, discount
> rate, click here.
>
>We want as many people as possible to read this important book, which changes
>forever our understanding of the Holocaust—and of warfare. Therefore, we are
>offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your
>library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to
>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your
>college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire
>book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
>“Dr. Koenigsberg’s is a message that anyone with an interest in changing the
>course of human history should internalize and reflect upon. Can human beings
>transcend war? If so, Nations Have the Right to Kill will be one of our most
>important guides. Its striking lucidity will be a catalyst for our collective
>evolution.”
>—Lee Hall, JD
>
>“Koenigsberg’s ideas cut through conventional notions about culture, the
>nation, and war, enabling us to see human institutions in utterly new ways.”
>—Ruth Stein, New York University, author of For Love of the Father
>“If a case can be made that nationalism is a religion, few books rival
>Koenigsberg’s Nations Have the Right to Kill. The author confronts the
>taken-for-granted world of nationalism and political realism, and makes them
>seem utterly peculiar and bizarre.”
>— Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion
>“Insightful and unsettling.”
>—E. Sam Cox, University of Central Missouri
>“A psychological inquiry of great depth and tragic urgency. A deep humanity
>informs this book, which is full of original and provocative insights.”
>—Walter A. Davis, Ohio State University
>“Nations have the Right to Kill is a passionate monograph that presents a
>searing criticism of the sacrificial ideology that mobilizes people for war.”
>—Michael Roberts, University of Adelaide
>“Despite the vast body of research devoted to the Holocaust, Nations Have the
>Right to Kill marks a seminal contribution.”
>—Brian A. Victoria, Antioch University, author of Zen at War
>________________________________
> Richard Koenigsberg received his Ph.D. in Social Psychology from the
> Graduate Faculty of the New School for Social Research and formerly taught at
> the New School. For the past 40 years, Dr. Koenigsberg has been writing and
> lecturing on the psychological sources of war and genocide. He is the author
> of four books, numerous papers and articles, and has lectured extensively
> throughout the United States.
>Why Did Hitler Kill?
>As the Final Solution began, Hitler professed to be undisturbed by the
>extermination of men, women and children: “If I don’t mind sending the pick of
>the German people into the hell of war without regret for the shedding of
>precious German blood, then naturally I have the right to destroy millions of
>men of inferior races who increase like vermin.”
>
>Hitler reflected that if he—as commander in chief of a great nation—was not
>faulted when he sent his own soldiers to die in massive numbers—why could he
>not also require Jews to die in massive numbers?
>
>The Holocaust was generated based on the logic of warfare: As Hitler asked his
>German soldiers to be obedient unto death, so did he ask the same of the Jews.
>The Soldier’s Body Gives Rise to the Reality of the Nation
>So pervasive and all-encompassing is the ideology of nationalism that we must
>remind ourselves—when we utter words such as France, Germany or America—that
>these terms refer to ideas or concepts (created by human beings) rather than
>to entities that exist substantially. When people say, “The individual must
>die so that the nation might live,” the implication is that the nation is a
>being with a life of its own. For some people, the preservation or continued
>existence of this entity—one’s nation—is deemed more significant than the
>preservation of actual human lives.
>In war, nations come alive. Killing and dying substantiate the existence of
>the nation-state. The sound and fury of battle lends credence to the idea that
>nations are real. Warfare and battle—the production of dead and wounded
>soldiers—anchors belief in material reality. Human beings are sacrificed in
>the name of perpetuating a magical entity—the body politic.
>During the First World War, soldiers’ bodies were fed into the jaws of battle
>under the assumption that the “lives” of nations were more significant than
>those of young men.
>British political leader David Lloyd George stated that every nation was
>“profligate of its manpower” and conducted its war activities as if there were
>no limit to the number of young men who were fit to be “thrown into the
>furnace to feed the flames of war.” He described the First World War as a
>perpetual, driving force that “shoveled warm human hearts and bodies by the
>millions into the furnace.”
>Just as the Aztecs believed that the hearts and blood of sacrificial victims
>were required to keep the sun god alive, so during the First World War
>millions of hearts and bodies were sacrificed to preserve the lives of
>nations. The First World War was a monumental potlatch—ostentatious
>destruction or conspicuous waste—whose purpose was to confer prestige, with
>each nation striving to demonstrate its greatness by throwing away the most
>men and materiel.
>“If I can ask German soldiers to
>be obedient unto death, why can’t
>I ask the same of Jews?”
>The Final Solution or Holocaust—the systematic extermination of the Jewish
>people—began well before the construction of death camps and gas chambers. As
>the German army moved east into the Soviet Union in late 1941 and early 1942,
>they were followed by the Einsatzgruppen, or mobile killing units.
>Approximately 1.5 million Jews were shot and killed, many of them buried in
>gorges mass graves that bear a striking resemblance to the trenches of the
>First World War.
>Hitler professed to be undisturbed by the extermination of men, women and
>children, providing the following rationale: “If I don’t mind sending the pick
>of the German people into the hell of war without regret for the shedding of
>valuable German blood, then I have naturally the right to destroy millions of
>men of inferior races who increase like vermin.” This statement reveals the
>“logic” of the Holocaust.
>We want as many people as possible to read this important book, which changes
>forever our understanding of the Holocaust—and of warfare. Therefore, we are
>offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your
>library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to
>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your
>college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire
>book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
>Hitler understood that as commander-in-chief of a great nation, he would not
>be faulted if he sent his soldiers into battle—where they would die in massive
>numbers. Hitler knew that—as Germany’s leader—he had the “right” to sacrifice
>his own young men.
>Then he reflected: “Why are the best my nation has to offer—the ‘pick of the
>German people’—being sent to die, while the worst people, Jews, are destined
>to survive the war?” Writing in Mein Kampf about the First World War—and his
>belief that while German soldiers had willingly sacrificed their lives, Jews
>had shirked their duty—Hitler declared: “If the best men were dying at the
>front, the least we could do was to wipe out the vermin.”
>Hitler vowed that the Second World War would be different. Jews would not
>escape scot-free: they would not be exempt from the obligation to suffer and
>to die. They too would be required to become “obedient unto death.”
>For Hitler, the logic of genocide derived from the logic of warfare. War,
>Hitler believed, was the occasion when a nation asks its people to die for
>their country. However, if a nation has the right to sacrifice its own
>soldiers, why should it not have the right to sacrifice others as well? In the
>Holocaust, Jews would join German soldiers and participate in the sacrificial
>ritual. Jews too would die when Germany commanded them to.
>We want as many people as possible to read this important book, which changes
>forever our understanding of the Holocaust—and of warfare. Therefore, we are
>offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your
>library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to
>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your
>college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire
>book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
>The Holocaust Victim as a Symbol of the German Soldier
>Although German soldiers are usually portrayed as aggressive warriors, the
>reality of their experience during the Second World War—as they waged war on
>the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union—was pathetic. The following
>passages are excerpts from letters written home by German soldiers (see
>Stephen G. Fritz, 1997)—starving, freezing, wounded and dying in places like
>Stalingrad:
>“Food was our most difficult problem. Our eyes gleamed, like the eyes of
>famished wolves. Our stomachs were empty and the horizon was devoid of any
>hope.”
>>“We stood in interminable lines, to receive a cup of hot water infused with a
>>minute portion of tea. We had too much food in order to die, but too little
>>in order to live.”
>>“The inability to bathe led to incredibly filthy conditions, which inevitably
>>resulted in a plague of lice. We felt like livestock rather than human
>>beings.”
>>“There is only anxiety, fear, and terror, a life without return along with
>>terror without an end. The heart is overwhelmed at the unbearable thought
>>that the smell of dead bodies is the beginning and end and ultimate sense and
>>purpose of our being.”
>>“We were crowded together like sardines in the cattle car. There were moans,
>>groans, and whimpers in that car; the smell of pus, urine, and it was cold.
>>We lay on straw. The train waited for hours.”
>Primo Levi observes (1986) that in many of its painful and absurd aspects the
>concentration world was “only a version, an adaptation of German military
>procedure,” the army of prisoners an “inglorious copy of the army proper or,
>more accurately, its caricature.” Leon Poliakov (1979) notes that Jewish
>victims in the camps were required to behave like soldiers, performing
>standard military rituals: “Dressed in rags, the slaves had to march at parade
>step and with a martial air when going off to work; while other slaves played
>military marches. Crippled by disease, their feet running with sores, the
>prisoners were forced to make their beds with geometric precision.”
>The Nazis glorified their willingness to surrender absolutely to Hitler and
>Germany. Sacrificial submission was conceived as honor, loyalty and
>faithfulness. Upon the death of a German soldier in the Second World War,
>newspaper obituaries announced the name of the soldier, stating that he had
>died “For the Fuehrer, the German people, and the fatherland.”
>German soldiers had given over their bodies entirely to the nation-state. Jews
>also were required to do so. However, no one would say that the death of a Jew
>was honorable and noble. The Holocaust depicted submission to a
>nation—suffering and death—without sugar coating. The Holocaust enacts the
>abject fate of a body that has been given over to—taken over by—the
>nation-state.
>German soldiers in the First and Second World Wars entered battle at the
>behest of Germany, often dying a brutal, ugly death. However, in spite of
>bodily mutilation and death, soldiers’ actions were described as noble and
>beautiful. The Holocaust enacted a perverse version of “dying for the
>country”—depicting the horrific consequences of submission to the nation-state.
>We want as many people as possible to read this important book, which changes
>forever our understanding of the Holocaust—and of warfare. Therefore, we are
>offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your
>library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to
>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your
>college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire
>book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
>
>Nations Have the Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust and War
>
>Table of Contents
>Introduction
>PART ONE: THE HOLOCAUST
>Chapter I: The Logic of the Holocaust
>Introduction
>>Jewish Disease within the German Body Politic
>>Devotion to Germany
>>Jewish Individualism as Negation of the German Community
>>Who Shall Live and Who Shall Die?
>>Jews Too Shall Die
>Chapter II: The Sacrificial Meaning of the Holocaust
>Introduction
>>Worshipping Germany
>>Jewish Destructiveness
>>War as a Sacrificial Ritual
>>The Duty to Lay Down One's Life
>>Soldiers as Sacrificial Victims
>>The Right to Destroy Millions of Men
>>Die for Germany-or be Killed
>PART TWO: WAR
>Chapter III: As the Soldier Dies, So the Nation Comes Alive
>Introduction
>>Obfuscation in the Depiction of Warfare
>>The Magnitude of Destruction and Futility of the First World War
>>What Was Going On?
>>Reification of the Nation-State
>>Willingness to Die as Declaration of Devotion
>>As the Soldier Dies, so The Nation Comes Alive
>Chapter IV: Virility and Slaughter
>Introduction
>>The First World War as Perpetual Slaughter
>>Doctrine of the “Offensive at All Costs”
>>The Battle of the Somme
>>Virility-The Battle of Verdun
>>The Sacred Ideal
>>Virility and Slaughter
>Chapter V: Aztec Warfare, Western Warfare
>Aztec Warfare
>>The First World War
>>Why the Perpetual Slaughter?
>>The Body and Blood of the Soldier Gives Rise to the Reality of the Nation
>>War as Potlatch
>>Warfare as Truth
>>The Nation-State Kills Its Own Soldiers
>PART THREE: THE LOGIC OF WAR AND GENOCIDE
>Chapter VI: Dying for the Country
>Introduction
>>Why Did Hitler Wage War?
>>Identity of Self and Nation
>>Aryan Willingness for Self-Sacrifice
>>Hitler's Experience of the First World War
>>Willingness to Die for One's Country
>>Why do the Best Human Beings Die in War While the Worst Survive?
>>Jewish “Shirkers”
>>As German Soldiers Die, So Must Jews
>>Sacrificial Death Stripped of Honor
>Chapter VII: The Logic of Mass Murder
>Introduction
>>The First World War
>>Hitler and the First World War
>>The Euthanasia Program
>>Obedience (Unto Death)
>>Hitler Goes to War
>>The Explanation
>>Conclusion
>Bibliography
>
>We want as many people as possible to read this important book, which changes
>forever our understanding of the Holocaust—and of warfare. Therefore, we are
>offering a free copy to college instructors if you will simply ask your
>library to order a copy. Please respond to this email—write to
>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com—providing your name and the name of your
>college or university. We will send you a free electronic copy of the entire
>book (identical to the physical copy, including the front & back cover).
>This message was sent to bmles...@tpg.com.au by
>oander...@libraryofsocialscience.com
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