Dear Colleague,
What would it mean to “awaken from the nightmare of history?” According to Dr. Richard Koenigsberg, awakening means recognizing—acknowledging—that sacrifice lies at the heart of warfare. War is generated in order to keep nations alive—by feeding them with sacrificial victims.
In Nations Have the Right to Kill Koenigsberg shows how Hitler—far from being anomalous as we prefer to believe—enacted the central ideology of nationalism: that it is “sweet and fitting” to die for a country; that sacrificial death in the name of a nation is the highest form of virtue.
Hitler required that his soldiers—and the German people—be “obedient unto death:” to demonstrate faith and loyalty by dying for the country. Hitler understood that nations require blood sacrifice to stay alive. And it was Hitler’s understanding of the sacrificial meaning of warfare that generated the Holocaust.
Hitler declared “If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without regret for the spilling of precious German blood, then I have naturally the right to destroy millions of men of inferior races who increase like vermin.” This “insight” was the source of the Holocaust.
In Nations Have the Right to Kill, Koenigsberg shows how the Holocaust grew out of Hitler’s understanding of the logic of warfare: his recognition that nation-states require sacrificial death.
Having realized that—as national leader—he had the right to sacrifice (kill) his own people, Hitler reflected: “If I am permitted to sacrifice (kill) my own people, do I not also have the right to sacrifice (kill) Jews—Germany’s mortal enemy?” The logic of the Holocaust evolved from the logic of warfare.
What would it mean to awaken from the nightmare of history? Simply to recognize the dream of sacrificial death at the core of the historical process. Is it worth it to face this painful truth? If we do so, Koenigsberg suggests, everything changes.
It’s worth it.
Best regards,
Orion
From the Introduction to
Nations Have the Right to Kill Over 200 million people were killed in the Twentieth Century as a result of acts of violence generated by nation-states and other societal groups. Historians document what occurred. But do we really understand why these things happened? This book—based on forty years of research—contains my findings on the sources and meanings of collective forms of violence.
Scholars study political conflicts as if each were a discrete case, seeking to identify “causes.” However, is it possible that there is a fundamental dynamic leading nations to go to war: an underlying principle that is independent of specific political situations?
The magnitude of political violence and destruction that occurred during the Twentieth Century is difficult to fathom. We are capable of knowing what occurred—the facts are part of the historical record and beyond doubt—but we tend to conceive of events as if they emanate from a domain of reality separate from human motivation. It is difficult to conceive that we human beings are the source; that we willed these events into being.
Although historians write about the desire for conquest, economic gain and many other factors that motivate societies to go to war, one product of warfare remains constant: death, maiming, and the destruction of the artifacts of civilization. We view death, maiming and the destruction of the artifacts of civilization, however, as by-products: things that occur as nations and leaders pursue other objectives.
But what if destruction and self-destruction are the fundamental purpose of warfare? This is the conclusion that I have reached. More precisely, perhaps warfare is undertaken as a form of sacrifice—a gigantic potlatch—whereby human beings give over their bodies and possessions to objects of worship with names like France, Germany, Japan, America, etc.
We would prefer not to know that this is the case. We still exist within the heart of the storm. Nationalism is a living religion, so powerful that we barely conceive of it as a religion. Yet Carolyn Marvin in her ground-breaking Blood Sacrifice and the Nation (1999) develops a theory similar to the one I present in this book. She shows how warfare and sacrifice function to support and sustain the idea of the nation.
The purpose of this book is to provide documentation showing how nations act in the name of killing or sacrificing people. We understand that nations have the right to kill, but assume there are specific reasons why states find it necessary to go to war. But what if it turns out that the production of sacrificial violence and victims is an essential function of the nation-state? What if wars are waged not for specific reasons, rather in order to produce opportunities for killing and dying? What if it turns out that killing (producing sacrificial victims) is one of the fundamental purposes of collective acts of violence? If we become capable of knowing this, will it make a difference?
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Awakening
"Nations Have the Right to Kill offers a riveting examination of the ideology that was the source of both warfare and genocide. 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
"It is disturbing to consider how the minds of young men are manipulated to get them to kill. But there is an even more disturbing hypothesis. Scholar Richard Koenigsberg argues that war is the result of a desire on the part of a society to sacrifice its own young men. Koenigsberg recasts the perception of war as normative, glorious and honorable. Rather, war is about the production of corpses and mutilated bodies. While men say they go to war for honor, or territory, or self-defense, or empire, in fact they go to war to prove that the nation is real. In war, Koenigsberg writes, "actual human bodies are sacrificed in the name of perpetuating a magical entity, the body politic. Sacrificial acts affirm the existence of this sacred object, the nation. Entering into battle is a devotional act, with death in war the supreme act of devotion." Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg of 'the last full measure of devotion,' what we commonly call the 'supreme sacrifice.' How close are we to admitting the truth of this terrible hypothesis?"
—Kent D. Shifferd, founder of the Wisconsin Institute for Peace and Conflict Studies, From War to Peace: A Guide to the Next Hundred Years
"Richard Koenigsberg is an intrepid generator of ideas on human destructiveness—that are startling all the more for being self-evident once they have been absorbed. The identification of the individual with the collective can create a horrific psychic situation whereby redemptive actions are suffused with bloody violence. 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, Clinical Professor of Psychotherapy, New York University, author of For Love of the Father
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Pages: 136 pages
Publisher:
Library of Social Science
Author:
Richard A. Koenigsberg
Paperback
ISBN: 0915042231
List Price: $39.99
Hardcover
ISBN: 091504224X
List Price: $45.95
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"Nations Have the Right to Kill offers an intriguing exploration of the connections between war and genocide. Koenigsberg concludes that both the sacrifice of German soldiers in glory on the battlefield, and sacrifice of victims in the gas chambers, served the same purpose: to feed the sacrificial bloodlust of the national deity." —Journal of Genocide Research
"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. Koenigsberg always begins with data: he takes a rhetorical approach by grounding his arguments in a careful analysis of Nazi writings, speeches and recorded correspondence and conversations."
—E. Sam Cox, Professor of Communication, University of Central Missouri
"A thoughtful, sometimes startling, well-written book: important and challenging."
—E. James Lieberman, MD, Metapsychology Online Reviews
"Two terrors from long ago haunt us still. First, the Holocaust: that cold-blooded massacre of millions. Second, the ability of political leaders during two World Wars 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 provocative answers. 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."
—Robert Whalen, History Department Chair, Queens University of Charlotte, author of Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914-1939
"This is 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, Professor Emeritus of English, Ohio State University
"With great precision, Dr. Richard Koenigsberg shows how in the Second World War Hitler encouraged the death (murder) of thousands of his obedient soldiers. Nations Have the Right to Kill provides a fresh and passionate mode of theorizing war." —Babak Rahimi, Associate Professor of Communication, Culture and Religion, University of California, San Diego
"Nations have the Right to Kill is a passionate monograph that presents a searing criticism of the sacrificial ideology that mobilizes people for war and sustains such efforts for the benefit of that 'magical entity, the body politic'."
—Michael Roberts, Professor of Anthropology, University of Adelaide, author of "Empowering the Body and Noble Death"
"Despite the vast body of research devoted to the Holocaust, Nations Have the Right to Kill marks a seminal contribution. Koenigsberg challenges the belief that Hitler was a uniquely inhuman monster, placing him squarely within the narrative of the nationalist ideology that claims dying for one's country represents the apogee of love and devotion. The Holocaust thus became 'a perverted, degraded version of dying for the country—sacrificial death at the hands of the nation-state stripped of words like honor, heroism and glory.'"
—Brian A. Victoria, Professor of Japanese Studies, Antioch University, author of Zen at War |
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