I didn't realize it at the time, but the title of my book, NATIONS HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL articulated the essence of Hitler's thinking. We don't have trouble accepting this proposition when it comes to the idea of killing one's nations enemies, but at the core of Hitler's thinking was insistence that a nation has the right to kill its own people.

Softening this idea, we say that people should be willing to "die for their country" or to "sacrifice their lives." What this amounts to is the belief that nations have the right to kill people. This is a right that only nations have: to murder large numbers of people.

This ideology, of course, is not unique to Nazi Germany. Many if not most nations believe that soldiers (and other citizens) have an obligation to die for their countries. Hitler enacted this sacred ideology with a desperate fervor.

Hitler believed, on the other hand, that there were certain people (certain kinds of people) who were unwilling to die for a country,  for Germany or for any other country. The name he gave to people unwilling to die for a country was "the Jew." 

 In Mein Kampf (1924), Hitler stated that if the best men were dying at the front. the "least we could do was to wipe out the vermin.” If during the war

twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, then the sacrifice of millions at the front “would not have been in vain.

"The Jew," for Hitler meant a human being unwilling to die for a country. This upset the order of things. Hitler believed that everyone was obligated to die for a country, whether for Germany or  some other nation.

Hitler was tormented by the idea that Jews did not die in the First World War. “Why had German men died at the front, whereas Jewish men were safe, comfortable and secure at home." In Mein Kampf (1924), Hitler wrote that upon returning home from the Western Front, he discovered that “all the offices were filled with Jews,” claiming that nearly “every clerk was a Jew and nearly every Jew was a clerk.” He was amazed at this “plethora of warriors of the chosen people” and could not help comparing them with their “rare representatives at the front.”

Contemplating the idea that Jews had shirked their duty to fight and die for Germany, Hitler became enraged, writing in Mein Kampf  that If the best men were dying at the front "the least we could do was to wipe out the vermin.”

The following passage foreshadows the Final Solution:

If at the beginning of the War and during the War twelve or fifteen thousand of these Hebrew corrupters of the people had been held under poison gas, as happened to hundreds of thousands of our very best German workers in the field, the sacrifice of millions at the front would not have been in vain.

Thus, the central project of Hitler's life: to make certain that Jews did not escape the destiny of human beings who belong to a nation-state: to die at the hands of a country. If everyone else in the world had to consent to be murdered by a nation state, why should Jews be exempt?