Summing up the sacrificial theory of war: The purpose of warfare is to produce dead and wounded bodies--as a testimony of devotion to the "sacred object" (Scott Atran; Richard Koenigsberg).

The nature of the object to which sacrifices are made is fungible: it could be Germany, or France, or Allah. The proof of the pudding (demonstration of devotion) lies in the willingness to die for the sacred object.

The photo below--along with Paul W. Kahn's exquisitely precise observation--convey the idea: it doesn't matter to whom the dead bodies belong; for what sacred object they have "given" their lives. The purpose is to have "died for the country."

The physical destruction of the soldier's body--in any case--is to "make present sovereign power," that is: to demonstrate the existence or reality of an object for the sake of which the men have died. 

First World War Battlefield

From Paul H. Kahn, Sacred Violence

“The battlefield is strewn with the disemboweled and beheaded, with severed limbs and broken bodies. All have died a terrible death in a display of sovereign power.

Viewing the battlefield from a certain distance, it is not even clear who is the object of sacrifice: the enemy and the conscript suffer the same threat and burden of physical destruction for the sake of making present sovereign power.”