I am unable to identify the source of the cartoon below about the First World War (perhaps someone can help). It depicts men being thrown into a furnace (a phrase often used by historians describing the Battle of Verdun). This cartoon provides a simple way of understanding the Holocaust, which replicated the First World War--human beings literary being thrown into a furnace. Nine-million dead in the First World War. Six-million dead in the Holocaust.

Jews replaced German soldiers. Jews replicated the experience of German soldiers: sent by national leaders to suffer a fiery death. As I've often observed, the First World War came before the Holocaust. The First World War was the independent variable, the Holocaust the dependent variable.

The Holocaust tells us something about the First World War. Tells us something about the nature of war: Human beings compelled to suffer death at the hands of a nation-state.

My book is Nations have the Right to Kill. This title crystallizes the First World War: each nation felt it had the right to kill. It's as if Hitler was performing a satire on this "right" of nations, reductio ad absurdum. If every nation that fought in the First World War felt it had the right to kill its enemies, why wouldn't Germany feel it had the right to kill its mortal enemy sixteen years later? The Holocaust conveys a message about warfare.

Richard Koenigsberg