Once having attained power as Chancellor of Germany, Hitler—who had fought in the First World War—began planning a Second World War. He declared that if millions of Germans had to perish in the next war, he would not shrink from making this sacrifice. But then Hitler reflected: If the leader of a great nation has the right to send its “best” people to their deaths—its own soldiers—why does this leader not also have the right to send the “worst” people to die? If Germany had the right to ask its own soldiers to be obedient unto death, why could the nation not also require that Jews forfeit their lives? Genocide and warfare were two sides of the same coin: A massive sacrificial project requiring that everyone die for Germany. Praise for Nations Have the Right to Kill:“Richard Koenigsberg is an intrepid generator and disseminator of novel ideas regarding human violence and destructiveness, ideas that are startling all the more for being self-evident once they have been absorbed. The identification of the individual with the nation and, reciprocally, the equation of the nation with oneself, can create a horrific psychic situation whereby redemptive actions are invoked that can be suffused with bloody violence and destruction. Koenigsberg's ideas cut trenchantly through conventional, rationalized notions about culture and war, enabling us to understand human institutions in utterly new ways.” “Scholars in Holocaust and Genocide studies will welcome Nations Have the Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust and War. Richard Koenigsberg shows how Hitler’s obsession with the death of millions of German youth during the First World War—combined with his belief that Jews had shirked their military responsibilities—led to the Holocaust. Combining solid historical scholarship and profound psychological insight, he opens the door to a host of further explorations. This book is recommended for courses that address the whys of the Holocaust, as well as historical and contemporary genocides.” “In this illuminating study of warfare, Dr. Richard A. Koenigsberg discusses how collective acts of violence safeguard the idea and practice of the nation. War, Koenigsberg argues, is a form of sacrificial violence: a ritual process through which a nation becomes alive. Individuals must sacrifice themselves in order for the nation to survive. He induces this persuasive argument from an array of historical examples across centuries, with special focus on the Holocaust and Nazi Germany. With great precision, he shows how in the Second World War Hitler encouraged the death (murder) of thousands of his obedient soldiers as a way for the German nation to attain vitality and permanence. Accordingly, Hitler engaged in acts of genocide because he believed the slaughter of Jews would balance out the loss of his heroic soldiers. Based on the ideology of sacrifice, Hitler justified the murder of millions of Jews, people whom—he believed—refused to give up their lives for the nation—and therefore had to be terminated for the sake of the nation. A fresh and passionate mode of theorizing war, Nations Have the Right to Kill provides a tantalizing look at how nations are constructed through sacrifice of self and other.” “Nations Have the Right to Kill reminds us in clear and incisive prose that sacrifice and total war were inextricably linked. Drawing on a broad range of knowledge spanning the social sciences, Richard Koenigsberg asks us to conceive of the Holocaust as the product of an ideology that demanded the sacrifice of both Germany's male population and European Jewry. His thesis resonates well into our own century by forcing us to confront the reasons why nations demand and expect human sacrifice.” “Despite the vast body of research devoted to the Holocaust, Nations Have the Right to Kill marks a seminal contribution to our understanding of this act of genocide. Challenging our belief that Hitler was a uniquely inhuman monster, Koenigsberg places him squarely within the narrative of a much more widely held ideology claiming that dying for one's country represents the apogee of love and devotion. Given that both war and genocide remain pervasive in today's world, Nations Have the Right to Kill forces us to reexamine, and reflect on, the true causes of these phenomena.” “Using Hitler as a focal point, Dr. Koenigsberg offers a riveting examination of the ideology of political violence. Nations Have the Right to Kill contains a message that anyone with an interest in changing the course of human history should internalize and reflect upon. Its striking lucidity will be a catalyst for our collective evolution.” |
