Click the arrow below to listen to the podcast. HOWARD BLOOM--“What compels a group of soldiers to willingly run into a barrage of automatic weapons during World War I? How did the kamikaze pilots come to believe their actions were warranted? Blood, sacrifice and so much more are discussed iwith special guest Richard A. Koenigsberg.”   Richard A. Koenigsberg is Director of the FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF POLITICAL PSYCHOSIS and author of:   Nations Have the Right to Kill  Hitler's Ideology Howard Bloom is founder of THE HOWARD BLOOM INSTITUTE He is the author of: The Muhammad Code   Click the links above for information on how to purchase either of the books. For information on purchasing The Muhammad Code, click the link above.

Responding to Bloom’s suggestion that violence is a bonding mechanism because killing is exhilarating, Koenigsberg suggested that the essence of warfare, rather, is the desire to sacrifice one's life for an object conceived as greater than the self. Warfare is collective masochism, the will to self-destruction. 

Koenigsberg reminded listeners that for the most part, soldiers involved in killing during World War I did not see their victims: they shot machine guns and artillery shells and did not closely encounter the deaths they caused. Soldiers were not motivated by enjoyment of bloodshed.

Koenigsberg discussed the ideology of sacrificial death as the core of civilization. 

For Hitler it was Germany; for the Aztecs it was the Sun God; for martyrs in the Middle East, it is Allah.

Koenigsberg and Bloom explained how Japan’s 1905 victory in the Russo-Japanese War influenced European military strategists in World War I. Europeans admired the Japanese soldiers’ spiritual willingness to give their lives.

Japanese leaders explained to their soldiers that the goal of entering battle was not to "win," but to have the honor of sacrificing their lives.

The will to die was an absolute, not "victory," Harry Truman fulfilled this Japanese wish.