"Why do good men die in war while bad men survive?"
Hitler's question that generated the Holocaust

Richard Koenigsberg

Nazism was a form of religious faith. Hitler declared that “Deutschland uber Alles” (Germany above all) was a profession of faith “mightier than any earthly faith.” Jews symbolized absence of faith in Germany i. e., unwillingness to sacrifice.

Hitler imagined Jewish German men had shirked fighting and dying during the First World War. Studies have proved otherwise: Germany’s Jews were as patriotic as non-Jewish Germans. One-hundred-thousand Jewish-German men were mobilized to fight in the First World War and twelve-thousand Jewish-German soldiers died.

Nonetheless, Hitler believed Jews had shirked their duty to die in the First World War. This idea haunted and obsessed him throughout his life. Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf (1923) that returning home from the war on furlough he discovered that the “offices were filled with Jews. Every clerk was a Jew, and every Jew was a clerk.” Hitler wrote that he was "amazed by the plethora of chosen people at home” and could not help "comparing them with their rare representation at the front.”

Hitler’s complaint—defining the course of what followed—was that Jewish-German men had not sacrificed their lives during the First World War as non-Jewish German men had. He believed Jews were disloyal and had actively shirked duty.

Beneath Hitler's complaints about the “Jewish race” lay a simple proposition: Jews were a people unwilling or unable to sacrifice for a national community. They were evil beyond the pale because, according to Hitler, the essence of a civilized human being was  his willingness to sacrifice one’s life for a nation community.

            Hitler became enraged contemplating the idea that so many loyal, faithful German soldiers had died at the front during the First World, whereas Jewish soldiers had not died at the front (a claim that was not accurate). Why were the best men losing their lives while the worst survived? This did not make sense. Those men who did the “good thing” were “rewarded” with death or bodily injury. Those men who did the “bad thing”—avoiding military duty—were rewarded with survival. Why were good men dying while bad men survived?