VIRTUE = WILLINGNESS TO SACRIFICE ONE’S LIFE

Willingness to sacrifice one's life for one’s country constituted a philosophy of life for Hitler. Dying for Germany was the supreme virtue—the essence of National Socialism. Beginning with this idea--that dying for Germany was the bedrock Nazism--it is not difficult to understand what followed. 

For Hitler, virtue--the summum bonum--was willingness to die for Germany. The absence of virtue--sinfulness--was unwillingness to sacrifice one’s life for one's country. Hitler glorified German soldiers who volunteered for military service.

WHY DO GOOD MEN DIE, WHILE THE WORST SURVIVE?

But what about men who did not serve in the military—who “shirked” their duty? Hitler became obsessed contemplating the idea that some Germans had avoided fighting in the First World War.

In Mein Kampf, Hitler pondered: “Why had the best (most courageous and patriotic) men died in the First World War, whereas the worst (most cowardly, unpatriotic) men survived?” This was a question about the meaning of warfare: why is virtue (willingness to fight and die) punished; while lack of virtue (avoiding battle and death) is rewarded?

Hitler explained in Mein Kampf that it in the First World war it was always a matter of “volunteers to the front, voluntary patrols, voluntary dispatch runners, volunteers for telephone detachments, volunteers for bridge passages, volunteers for U-boats, volunteers for airplanes, volunteers for storm battalions, etc.” During four-and-a-half years, “again and again, again volunteers on a thousand occasions.”

Men filled with an “ardent love for their country,” urged by a “lofty sense of duty,” answered the call for volunteers.

Some men, however, Hitler believed, sought to avoid military duty. These were men who lacked courage and a sense of duty. Hitler summarized his view in Mein Kampf:

One extreme of the population, constituted of the best elements, had given a typical example of heroism and had sacrificed itself almost to a man. The other extreme, constituted of the worst elements of the population, had preserved itself almost intact by taking advantage of absurd laws and because the authorities failed to enforce certain articles of the military code.

The best German men had died. Whereas the "worst elements of the population" had “preserved itself almost intact.” This was the "lesson"  Hitler took away after four years of fighting.

THE BEST MATERIAL IS BEING “THINNED OUT”

Hitler addresses the issue again in Mein Kampf:

While for four-and-a-half years our best human material was being thinned to an exceptional degree on the battlefields, our worst people wonderfully succeeded in saving themselves. For each hero who made the supreme sacrifice and ascended the steps of Valhalla, there was a shirker who cunningly dodged death on the pretense of being engaged in business that was more or less useful at home.

Since the best “human material” was being “thinned out,” this kind of human material steadily “grew scarcer and scarcer.” Those soldiers who did not die--were “maimed in the fight,” or gradually “joining the ranks of the crippled.” 

The four-hunded thousand who died or were permanently maimed “could not be replaced,” Hitler explained. Their loss was “far more than merely numerical.” With their death, the scales—already “too lightly weighed at the end which represented the best human qualities”—now became “heavier on the other end with vulgar elements of infamy and cowardice.” There was an increase in the "elements that constituted the worst extreme of the population.”

KILL THOSE WHO DO NOT SACRIFICE THEIR LIVES

Nothing could be done about men who already had died. But it was possible to take measures--in the future--against elements of the population that had not sacrificed their lives. National Socialism specialized in killing the "worst" elements of the population: those human beings who were unable or unwilling to sacrifice their lives.

Hitler never abandoned the view that German men should sacrifice their lives in battle. The Second World War was an extension of the First World War: German soldiers again would be required to die for their country.

Hitler's unique contribution to the philosophy of warfare was to expand the categories of people that would be required to die for Germany. Why should  soldiers be the only people to forfeit their lives? In power, Hitler enlarged the classes of people who would be expected to die at the behest of Germany: defective children, mental patients, gypsies, homosexuals, German citizens. And of course, Jews. 

Those who sacrifice their lives voluntarily for a country are called "heroes." Those in German who died involuntarily we call "victims." In either case, Hitler's  mission was to get people to die for Germany. This was the fundamental meaning of "world conquest:" everyone had to die for Germany.