Dear Colleague,

The title of my book, Nations Have the Right to Kill, refers to the fact that people tend to believe or assume that nations have the right to kill. Why do many embrace the idea that killing and dying for the sake of one’s country is honorable and noble? Please write to me at rakoenigsberg@earthlink.net.

In his review essay of Nations Have the Right to Kill, Professor Sam Cox notes that my point that nations grant their leaders the right to kill is “unsettling.” However, I am not simply saying that nation-states are given the right to kill “others.” The central focus of my book is that nations give leaders the right to kill their own people. Carolyn Marvin claims that “blood sacrifice preserves the nation.” The totem secret, she says, is knowledge that “society depends on the death of its own members at the hands of the group.”

In the First World War, nations across Europe embraced and acting upon this proposition—that their continued existence depended upon their capacity to sacrifice the lives of human beings. What a monumental blood-letting this war was: 9 million killed, 21 million wounded, and millions more missing in action.

German men were sent to the Western front “like sheep to the slaughter.” Two million German men died (and millions more were wounded and/or maimed) in the First World War. Hitler participated in the War throughout its duration. Having witnessed hundreds of his comrades blown to bits—having experienced battle and the slaughter of young German men—he was acutely aware of warfare’s consequences.

Hitler knew what had occurred during the First World War, but could not bear to acknowledge that his own nation and its leaders had been responsible for the slaughter. This is where his odyssey began: In Hitler’s incapacity to face the traumatic reality that his beloved nation had caused the death of 2 million Germans. Hitler could not bear to say that Germany was killing its own soldiers. Indeed, for each one of us, it is painful and deeply traumatic to confront the idea that nations seek to kill their own people.

The “redundancy” that Professor Cox and several other reviewers have commented upon grows out of the traumatic nature of the ideas that I convey in Nations Have the Right to Kill.  I repeat certain ideas and quotations in several chapters as I struggle to come to terms with what I know to be the case, but do not wish to acknowledge to myself.

Below is a passage that appears several times in Nations Have the Right to Kill: an entry in a German regimental diary reporting what occurred when British troops pushed through to the German line on the second day of the Battle of the Loos in September 1915. The numerical superiority of the British troops was considerable, but several dozen German machine-guns faced them:

“Ten columns of extended line could clearly be discerned. Each advancing column was estimated at more than a thousand men, offering such a target as had never been seen before, or thought possible. Never had the machine-gunners such straightforward work to do nor done it so effectively. They traversed to and fro along the enemy’s ranks unceasingly. The men stood and fired triumphantly into the mass of men advancing across open grassland. As the entire field of fire was covered with the enemy’s infantry, the effect was devastating and they could be seen falling literally in hundreds.”

I still find it difficult to imagine what occurred during this battle: as the first row of men was slaughtered—mowed down by machine-gun fire—the next row of British soldiers appeared in full view of the German gunners, also to be mowed down. The slaughter persisted, but British soldiers did not seek to evade the bullets. Proud and honorable men, they continued to walk into machine-gun fire, row after row after row.

I chose this passage because it vividly illustrates how battles were fought during the First World War. I could have selected many similar examples. The primary battle strategy of the First World War consisted of soldiers getting out of trenches en masse and moving toward the enemy line. Hundreds of history books document what occurred. It is not difficult to establish the facts. What is difficult is to accept and come to terms with the truth.

For four years—from August 1914 to November 1918—soldiers were asked to get out of trenches and to run forward into artillery shells and machine-gun fire. The result—9 million dead—means that an average of 6000 men were killed each day during the First World War. Attacks were repeated again and again, with no positive results. Reading accounts, it is as if one is in the midst of a nightmare.

Though battle after battle was futile, the strategy persisted. The reality of what occurred is difficult to grasp or hold on to. One’s mind blurs and boggles. Why was this happening? Stepping back from the fray (removing oneself from the trench), the following sentence captures the essence of the First World War: Nations sent young men to be slaughtered.

How is one to explain the massive, monumental destructiveness of this war? Why did leaders and nations persist in a battle strategy that accomplished nothing? Historians are unable to provide a satisfactory answer. In conversations I’ve had at conferences, they often throw up their hands and declare, “The generals were stupid.” Scholarly treatises proclaim that military strategists “underestimated the power of the machine-gun.”

The most knowledgeable commentators acknowledge that it is difficult to comprehend the First World War. In the extraordinary video series, “The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century” ( 1996), Yale professor Jay Winter (who was a co-producer and co-writer of the series) provides voiceover in a tone of pained, baffled bewilderment, concluding:

“The war solved no problems. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.”

After four years of slaughter, nothing had been gained, although it is possible to summarize the results: 9 million men (and some women) were dead; over 21 million men had been maimed or wounded; millions of noncombatants were starving; millions of wives were without husbands and millions of children without fathers.

Here is another passage from Nations Have the Right to Kill depicting a typical battle. In the following report, British Brigadier General Rees describes the massacre of his own brigade as his men moved toward German lines:

“They advanced in line after line, dressed as if on parade and not a man shirked going through the extremely heavy barrage, or facing the machine-gun and rifle fire that finally wiped them out. I saw the lines, which advanced in such admirable order melting away under fire. Yet not a man wavered, broke the ranks, or attempted to come back. I have never seen, indeed could never have imagined such a magnificent display of gallantry, discipline and determination. The reports from the very few survivors of this marvelous advance bear out what I saw with my own eyes: that hardly a man of ours got to the German Front line.”

Despite the total failure of this attack, General Rees regarded his brigade’s destruction in a positive light, observing that not a man “shirked” the machine-gun and rifle fire that wiped them out. Though his troops were “melting away under fire,” the General is proud that they continued to advance in admirable order. In the face of the barrage of bullets, his men did not waver, break ranks, or attempt to come back. The General gushes that he had never seen such a magnificent display of “gallantry, discipline and determination.”

Why did the General believe that this advance was “marvelous” despite it being an absolute disaster? His judgment derives from his admiration for the quality of his troops’ morale and spirit. This march into death demonstrated the depth of the troops’ devotion to Great Britain. By marching into machine-gun fire, men showed that they were willing to “die for their country.” Willingness to walk into machine-gun fire constituted definitive proof that the soldiers loved their nation.

As an “extreme case,” the First World War crystallizes and reveals the fundamental dynamic of warfare: nations and leaders ask young men to enter battle where they may die or be maimed; soldiers respond to the call of their nation and leaders, enter into battle and often “die for their country.” We hardly remember the reasons or causes of the First World War. However, the broad outline of what occurred is clear: nations sent young men to their deaths.

We prefer not to know that nations kill their own people. Hitler could not acknowledge that Germany and its leaders were killing his comrades. We barely can say now— nearly 100 years later—that Germany and its leaders caused the death of millions of German soldiers; that Great Britain and its leaders were responsible for the death of millions of British soldiers; that France and its leaders caused the deaths of millions of French soldiers.

Some people imagine that leaders who wage war in the name of nations are governed by secret, hidden agendas. Based on my research, I have found that leaders who generate violent political conflicts are sincere in their beliefs. People who act to bring about the deaths of hundreds–of thousands of people do not function according to rational calculation, however much we would like to imagine that they do. Indeed, why does the belief persist—in the face of the Twentieth Century’s astonishing record of political destruction—that leaders act according to “rational” considerations?

Leaders who initiate political violence live deeply within the template or shared fantasy that is the source of warfare. In doing what they do, they plug into and actualize a narrative laying at the heart of civilization. This narrative or ideology or fantasy revolves around the belief that the preservation of one’s nation depends upon warfare. Human beings imagine that if people are willing to die for the sake of their nation and its sacred ideals, this means that their nation exists and that its sacred ideals are real.

Nations are not entirely good; although we desperately wish to believe that they are and struggle to transform them into founts of goodness. The fundamental reality is that nations kill. One may say that nations kill for good reasons, or that they kill for bad reasons. For any given conflict, one can spell out reasons for and against going to war. But warfare is not about reasons.

How strange that theories of political scientists begin with the assumption that leaders’ decisions are based upon and grow out of “rational choice”? If choices are calculated rationally, then why the persistent episodes of destruction and self-destruction—the never-ending disaster called “History”? Are these theorists suggesting that political decisions are based on rational considerations, but then somehow—by chance or accident—things go awry?

Wouldn’t it be more parsimonious to hypothesize that people who initiate and wage war “know not what they do”; that they are living within and acting upon a fantasy of which they are not entirely aware? Are we capable of confronting the reality of what war is? Can we live within the trauma as we encounter the painful truth? Please write to me at rakoenigsberg@earthlink.net.

With best regards,

Richard Koenigsberg