Hitler: "If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without regret for the shedding of valuable German blood, then I have naturally the right to destroy millions of men of inferior races who increase like vermin."
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Hitler was producing a reductio ad absurdum. He was telling us something about the nature of war. He was saying, "As the leader of a great nation--I am entitled to send my own soldiers to die in battle, the best of the best. If society considers it acceptable for me to send my own soldiers to their deaths, why should I not also be permitted to ask Jews, enemies of the German people, to die?"

The Holocaust grew out of Hitler's thinking on the nature of warfare. He extended the logic of warfare: "If I as a national leader am entitled to ask my own soldiers to die, why should I not also be allowed to ask Jews--enemies of the German people--to die?"

The Holocaust was another version of "dying for a country," dying for a nation stripped of honor and glory. If one thinks carefully, one can see that Hitler was presenting an anti-war message: pushing the body of the vicitim of political violence (ugly, disgusting, mangled) into our face: demonstrating that it is not sweet and beautiful to die at the hands of a nation-state.

The Holocaust: The Final Solution

The Final Solution—systematic extermination of the Jewish people—began before the construction of death camps and gas chambers. As the German army moved eastward into the Soviet Union in late 1941 and early 1942, they were followed by the Einsatzgruppen or mobile killing units. Approximately 1.5 million Jews were shot and killed, many of them buried in gorges that bear a striking resemblance to the trenches of the First World War. Hitler professed to be undisturbed by the extermination of men, women, and children, providing the following rationale:

Nature if cruel. Therefore, we too, may be cruel. If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without regret for the shedding of valuable German blood, then I have naturally the right to destroy millions of men of inferior races who increase like vermin (Meltzer, 1976).

Here is another translation of this crucial passage:

Nature is cruel; therefore we also are entitled to be cruel. When I send the flower of German youth into the steel hail of the next war without feeling the slightest regret over the precious German blood that is being spilled, should I not also have the right to eliminate millions of an inferior race that multiplies like vermin? (Fest, 1974).

The Holocaust represented an extension of the logic that allows leaders of nation-states to sacrifice the lives of their own soldiers. Hitler declared that if German soldiers were required to die, Jews also had to die. If German soldiers were suffering and dying in massive numbers on the field of battle, so Jews would be required to suffer and die in massive numbers in the camps. If the German nation could compel its best people to die, surely it had the right to send the worst people to die.

The logic of genocide followed the logic of warfare.