JUST PUBLISHED:
NATIONS HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL by Richard A. Koenigsberg

Warfare is often viewed as the result of “primitive aggression” breaking through the veneer of civilization. Some scholars suggest that identification with the symbolic order “rescues” the individual from violence and perversion. NATIONS HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL demonstrates how two-hundred million people in the 20th century died IN THE NAME OF THE SYMBOLIC ORDER AND FOR THE SAKE OF CIVILIZATION’S SACRED IDEALS.

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The proof of the pudding is in the dying: Warfare proves that nations are more than imagined communities. Read the exciting Chapter in Nations Have the Right to Kill, “As the Soldier Dies, so the Nation Comes Alive”


Just Published/New
NATIONS HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL:
Hitler, the Holocaust and War
By Richard A. Koenigsberg

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.”
     —Ruth Stein, Ph.D., Clinical Professor, New York University, author of For the Love of the Father

“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.”
     —Dr. Steven Leonard Jacobs, Department of Religious Studies and Chair of Judaic Studies, University of Alabama

Click here for a form that contains complete ordering information
Bring this form to your acquisitions librarian: Or use it to fill out your own “library request form.”

“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.”
     —Professor Babak Rahimi, Program for the Study of Religion, University of California, San Diego

“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.”
     —Brian E. Crim, Professor of History, Lynchburg College, author of “Terror from the Right: Revolutionary Terrorism and the Failure of the Weimar Republic”

“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.”
     —Brian A. Victoria, Professor of Japanese Studies, Antioch University, author of Zen at War

Click here for a form that contains complete ordering information
Bring this form to your acquisitions librarian: Or use it to fill out your own “library request form.”

“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.”
     —Lee Hall, JD, author of Capers in the Churchyard