"The State must own death"
James Tyner on Genocide and the Geographical Imagination: Life and Death in Germany, China and Cambodia.

James Tyner is Professor of Geography at Kent State University and a Fellow of the American Association of Geographers. He is the author of 18 books and over 100 articles and book chapters. He is widely regarded for his work on the Cambodian genocide and on the subject of violence and genocide more broadly.

Among his books are the titles directly below. Please click any or all of the links for information on these grounbreaking titles.

Iraq, Terror, and the Philippines’ Will to War received the Julian Minghi Award for Outstanding Contribution to Political Geography.

His War, Violence, and Population: Making the Body Count, received the AAG’s Meridian Book Award for Outstanding Contribution to the Study of Geography.

The Politics of Lists: Bureaucracy and Genocide under the Khmer Rouge

Genocide and the Geographical Imagination: Life and Death in Germany, China, and Cambodia

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This groundbreaking book brings an important spatial perspective to our understanding of genocide through a fresh interpretation of Germany under Hitler, Cambodia under the Khmer Rouge, and China’s Great Leap Forward famine under Mao.

James A. Tyner's powerful analysis of these horrifying cases provides insight into the larger questions of sovereignty and state policies that determine who will live and who will die.

James A. Tyner is professor in the Department of Geography at Kent State University.

Chapter II of Genocide and the Geographical Imagination (James Tyner), “The State Must Own Death.” is the best current synthesis of research articulating the origins and development of the Nazi’s “Euthanasia Movement”—and how medical killing led directly to the Holocaust.
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Scroll down to the right for information on Genocide & the Geographical Imagination: Life & Death in Germany, China & Cambodian--and how to purchase it.
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Tyner cites the famous passage from the 1920 book by Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding, Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life, the foundational text justifying, authorizing, and generating state murder:

If one thinks of a battlefield covered with thousands of dead youth and contrasts this with our institutions for the feebleminded with their solicitude for the living patients—then one would be deeply shocked by the glaring disjunction between the sacrifice of the most valuable possession of humanity on the one side, and on the other the greatest care of beings who are not only worthless but even manifest negative value.

The message is clear: If the state is willing to sacrifice the lives of its soldiers, why should so many resources be expended to keep mental patients alive? If the state is willing to kill its own soldiers (its most valuable possession), why can’t it also kill human beings who are “worthless?”

Beginning with this syllogism, we can understand the origins of mass-murder in Germany: why Hitler and the Nazis believed that the state gave them the “right” to kill.

However, the question remains: WHY DOES THE STATE HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL ITS OWN SOLDIERS?