Reviews of Nations have the Right to Kill were quite positive. However, some reviewers observed that I repeated certain themes--even certain passages--again and again. Guilty as charged. However, sometimes things need to be repeated. I'm not writing simply to "produce a book." I'm looking to change human consciousness. Some ideas need to be repeated over and over again until one gets it...and embraces it as one's own.

This is true for me as much as for anyone who reads my writings. I need to convince myself that I am correct; to internalize my own findings. I have to persuade myself to accept my unpleasant discoveries. Just writing something is not sufficient. The more times I "work through" an ideas the more I'm persuaded of its correctness. I overcome my own tendency toward denial. This is true as well for anyone who reads my writings.

Denial lies at the heart of historical writing. It's hard to embrace what human beings collectively have done to each other, particular in the 20th century. It's hard to acknowledes the horrors that we have created.

In psychoanalysis, one repeats an interpetation one-hundred times if necessary...in order for the patient to "get it" (even if the patient is oneself). And after one "gets it," one repeats the interpretation a hundred times...to avoid self-destruction.

Best regards,

Richard Koenigsberg

If German soldiers were killed in the name of the state—obligated to die for Germany in the First World War— why should Jews be exempt from this obligation? The Jew was compelled replicate the stance of the German soldier in the First World War: to die when Germany asked him to do so.

The death camps forced Jews to replicate the posture of abject submission that characterized German soldiers in the trenches of the First World War. German soldier had been compelled to "die for their country." Now Jews too would be compelled to submit to—give their lives to the German nation-state. This was Hitler’s diabolic plan. The demonstration that he enacted. His message to the world.

Just as German soldiers of the First World war had died by poison gas attacks, so too would Jews. Hitler created an enactment: do unto others as had been done unto you. He turned passivity into activity. Where German soldiers had been, there shalt Jews be.

Hitler himself had been wounded by a poison gas attack at the end of the First World War, nearly blinded. Now he would compel others to experience what he had gone through: Do unto others as others have done unto you. The leaders of Germany sent him and his comrades to die in the First World War. Now he was Germany's leader and would send Jews to die. The Jew in the death camp symbolized the German soldier in the First World War.

War preceded genocide. As a psychologically trained historian, I say that war was the independent variable and genocide the dependent variable. Genocide was a function of warfare.

Genocide was a response to Hitler’s experience of war. If we understand this, we  begin to understand everything. The Holocaust becomes comprehensible. But we hesitate to say that a nation kills it’s own soldiers. As soon as we can say this, everything becomes clear. Hitler provided a demonstration. By creating the Holocaust, Hitler told us something about warfare: how horrible it is when human beings give over their bodies to a nation-state.

At the core of Nazism was Hitler’s desire that every single human being (in the world) submit to the Germany. This is what the fantasy of “conquering the world” meant. Every single human being would submit. Every human being had to submit—as the SS man had done—becoming obedient unto death. Jews, above all other peoples, would not escape this moral imperative: to die for Germany.   

Hitler brought the death camps came into being to demonstrate that Jews too would be compelled to submit. No one was exempt from the obligation to die. Hitler would see to it that no one escaped the sacrificial obligaton. Death for the sake Germany had to be absolute; total.

Jews symbolized the Nazi’s own posture of absolute obedience. However, this instance of total obedience was disgusting rather than noble. Death camps enacted the negative experience of submission to the nation-state. The Final solution represented another instance of the ideology of “obedience unto death:” absolute subjugation stripped of words such as “honor” and “loyalty” and glory.       

The Jew in the death camp enacted the Nazi's own experience of total submission, now experienced as abject degradation. The Jew enraged the SS-man…he saw in the Jew his own posture of total obedience. He would compel the Jew to adopt a posture of submission that was even more extreme than his own.

Germany sent its soldiers to the Western front in the First World War. They went “like sheep to the slaughter.” The German nation and its leaders compelled young men to enter into battles where there was a high probability they would be killed or maimed. Two-million Germans died in the First World War and over four millions were wounded. Generals like von Hindenburg and Ludendorff were responsible for mass-murder, yet were glorified as “great leaders.”

Isn’t it strange how nations (and historians) glorify mass-murderers? The Generals of the First World War, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin and Mao. The greatest historical figures are mass-murderers. We glorify them by writing about them. 

When Hitler became leader of Germany, he followed in the steps of leaders before him. As the German nation had sent young men to be slaughtered in the First World War, so Hitler as Germany's leader would send young men to be slaughtered in the Second World War. Is this not the role or privilege of a national leader? To seek conquest and glory, and to willingly sacrifice the lives of young men in the course of pursuing these goals?

The Final Solution grew out of Hitler’s perception or understanding that the role of a leader is to  order one's own people (soldiers) to die. It followed that if no one objects when a nation sends its soldiers to die, why would anyone object if Hitler sent Jews—mortal enemies of the German people—to their deaths? The Final Solution was an alternative version of “dying for a country.” Hitler was conveying a message, although obliquely: it is not sweet and fitting nor beautiful to die for a country. The Holocaust contained an anti-War message.