UNWILLINGNESS (INABILITY) TO SACRIFICE FOR A NATIONAL COMMUNITY: THE ESSENCE OF HITLER'S HATRED OF JEWS

Richard A. Koenigsberg

Warfare usually is conceived as “aggression.” On the other hand, one might view war as an institution which produces dead dead human beings. Soldiers enter battle knowing they might be killed. Sacrificing one’s life for one’s nation (dying) is considered a noble, praiseworthy act. The Roman poet Horace coined the phrase: “Dulce et decorum est Pro Patria mori.” It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s country.

Reflecting on the meaning of warfare, a British General declared: “You offer yourself to be slain. This is the essence of being a soldier.” A veteran of World War II in a documentary celebrating July 4 (Independence Day) stated: “The real hero is the dead soldier.” A “hero” is someone who sacrificed his life for his country.

 Islamic radicals who engage in suicide attacks are called "martyrs." I pose the question: Is there a substantial distinction between a martyr who dies for his religion and a soldier who dies for his country?

When British Generals asked their soldiers to move forward in the face of machine-gun fire during the First World War, they did so without shirking and regularly were mowed down. Is there a difference between what British soldiers did and what suicide bombers do?

During the First World War, the British invaded Ottoman, Turkey. On April 25, 1915 one-hundred-thousand troops from Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand landed on the Gallipoli peninsula with the intention of capturing Istanbul. As the British prepared to attack, the leader of the Turkish Army, spoke to his troops, declaring: “I do not ask you today to fight for your motherland. I ask you to die for it.” Few national leaders put it so bluntly. 

       Nazi ideology or morality revolved around this idea that dying  for Germany was noble and honorable. Hitler declared that a man who loves his country proves it “solely by the sacrifices he is prepared to make for it.” National Socialism meant "acting with a boundless and all-embracing love for one’s country and if necessary dying for it.” 

Hitler’s concept of the Aryan was not what most people believe it was. The essential characteristic of a member of the Aryan race, according to Hitler, was his willingness to sacrifice for the community. The Jew, on the other hand, Hitler stated, was the “mightiest counterpart to the Aryan,” a human being who was unwilling to sacrifice for a national community. The fundamental characteristic of members of the Jewish race was their “absolute absence of any sense of sacrifice.” This was the essence of Hitler’s complaint about and hatred of Jews.