Nations Have the Right to Kill

Excitement for the groundbreaking Nations Have the Right to Kill continues to grow (the official publication date is June 15, 2009). The book has been adopted as a text and as supplementary reading for courses on the Holocaust, genocide, Nazism, the First World War, and the Second World War, as well as for courses that more broadly address the causes of warfare and other forms of collective violence.

LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE is producing a series of videos by Dr. Koenigsberg in which he explains, explicates and expands upon the theories presented in Nations Have the Right to Kill. The first is now available at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ua0RQZENufY

This and future videos may be used by you and your students as an auxiliary to the book.

P. S. Please write or call for information on pricing for classroom copies of Nations Have the Right to Kill and how to order.

“Two terrors from long ago haunt us still. First, the Holocaust: that cold-blooded massacre of millions by homicidal technocrats. Second, the ability of leaders during the First World War to convince ordinary people that slaughtering their neighbors was patriotic. A half century later, we continue to ask: how was this possible? Richard A. Koenigsberg offers a provocative answer. Driving these terrors, Koenigsberg argues, was a distinct “logic” rooted in a dense and ancient homicidal fantasy. Koenigsberg’s analysis ranges from gender identity, to the First World War, to Aztec warfare. No single answer will exorcize our terrors. But Koenigsberg’s bold and original approach—clearly and precisely presented—will help us, if not to expel them, at least, finally, to comprehend them.”
—Professor Robert Weldon Whalen, Chairman of the History Department, Queens University of Charlotte, Author of Sacred Spring: God and the Birth of Modernism in Fin De Siècle Vienna

“Nations Have the Right to Kill is an inquiry of great depth. Koenigsberg finds in Hitler's genocide an example that can be used to expose a disorder that many nations share. A deep humanity and ethical urgency informs this book, which is full of original and provocative insights.”
—Walter A. Davis, Professor Emeritus, Ohio State University, author of Death's Dream Kingdom: The American Psyche since 9-11

“Nations have the Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust and War is a passionate monograph on the sacrificial ideology that mobilizes people for war. The vocabulary conveyed by state agencies on the Western front—the ideology of duty and dedication affirmed by soldiers on the battlefield during the First World War—is not far removed from the language paraded by Islamic suicide bombers and LTTE martyrs in Sri Lanka. Idioms and images expressed in starkly different settings are markedly similar. Do these disparate cases articulate a common dynamic? This is the question posed by Koenigsberg’s inspiring study.”
—Michael Roberts, Professor of Anthropology, University of Adelaide, author of “Empowering the Body & Noble Death”