Why do we wish to say that following orders—often to the point of being a slave—is ordinary or banal? Perhaps it is just this tendency to submit to leaders and the groups they represent that lies at the heart of the psychopathology of human social life.

I suggest that what is “ordinary” and what is “pathological” are separate categories. In the Nazi case, ordinary cultural norms within German society--were deeply pathological.

With their ideology revolving around obedience unto death, the Nazis enacted the  tendency to submit to the group and blindly follow orders—to an unprecedented degree.

Willingness to be obedient unto death—to sacrifice one’s life for Germany—was the Nazi’s highest virtue. Willingness to become obedient—to sacrifice one’s life for Germany—simultaneously defined the essence of German pathology during the era of the Third Reich.

Hitler declared to the German people, “You are nothing, your nation is everything.” Nazism meant self-negation in the name of the glorification of Germany. For the Nazis, their deepest pathology and highest ideal--abandoning subjective will and worshipping Germany--were one and the same.

We begin to understand why people hesitate to use the language of psychopathology in relationship to political movements At the heart of Nazi ideology were the ideals of respect for leaders, honor, loyalty, and a sense of duty: qualities most of us consider virtues. The ideology of nationalism is within each of us. We believe—on some level—that it is good to love one’s country and be willing to sacrifice one’s life if one’s nation requires that we do so.

However, it was precisely the Nazis’ espousal of these virtues that led to group death. Germany’s sacred ideals and her disease were one and the same. Willingness to sacrifice for Germany became abject submission and suicidal self-destruction.

This is the crux of our difficulty: unwillingness to say that the most highly acclaimed political virtues generate the most profound forms of political pathology.

Hitler fought in the First World War and witnessed the death and dismemberment of hundreds of his comrades. He knew—but could not say—that war was awful. In Mein Kampf, he declared that it would be a “sin to complain” about the death of so many German soldiers because, after all, “were they not dying for Germany?”

Something within each of us says that sacrificing one’s life for one’s nation is not a bad thing. Something within us says that it is a virtue to be willing to die for one’s country.

Masochism describes the psychic tendency to place oneself into a situation that may result in physical and/or psychological damage. The job of a soldier—more than any other job—may lead to severe and permanent physical and/or mental damage. Within the discourse of psychotherapy, what could be more masochistic than the willingness to risk death by becoming a soldier?

Yet the ideology of nationalism forbids us to call soldiers masochists. I can't recall ever hearing this term applied to a soldier. We admire the soldier's willingness to place himself in situations of extreme danger. His willingness to sacrifice his life for his nation lies at the core of an ideology that many human beings embrace.

Most of us feel that we belong to a national community. We say that we love our country. How can one speak of masochistic submission in the same breath as love of country? Within the framework of the cult of nationalism, it is not appropriate to say--that willingness to die for one’s country represents a form of psychopathology.

Perhaps Hitler’s legacy is to compel us to consider the possibility that contained within the ideology of nationalism--the most ordinary political ideology--is a severe form of psychopathology. Devotion to one’s nation may be a virtue, but also may generate monumental destruction. Hitler and Nazism force us to question the claim that willingness to sacrifice one’s life for one’s nation is noble and beautiful.

The monumental destructiveness of the 20th century grows out of the human attachment to ideals conceived as more significant than human beings. People submitted to ideologies conceived or imagined to be greater than the self.

Human beings die and kill in the name of political doctrines like Communism, nations like Germany, or Gods like Allah. Attachment to ideologies conceived as absolutes—and willingness to commit violent acts for their sake—constitutes a significant dimension of the historical process, which reflects, as Ernest Becker might say, a series of competing immortality ideologies.

Attachment to omnipotent ideologies structures the course of “normal” political history. Wars, revolutions, acts of genocide and acts of terror seek to glorify, promote and propagate ideologies conceived as absolute. Within the political domain—the competition between sacred ideologies—anything and everything is permissible. Sacred ideologies release human beings from moral structures and strictures that govern other domains of social existence.

Within this political domain—the struggle between competing ideologies conceived as sacred or absolute—the domain of clinical psychology and language of psychopathology--are not allowed to enter.

The historical record--the history of the human race--is an endless story of political violence conceived as natural or normal.

The domain of politics--the "history" that is created within this domain--is imagined to be occurring within a space that is separate from—transcends—ordinary human existence and social life. Within this “special place,” things occur that do not--cannot--occur within other societal spaces or places. Standards that apply in ordinary, “everyday" life do not apply.