Hegel on the Killing Power of the State
Richard Koenigsberg

"The Nation State is spirit in its actuality is therefore the absolute power on earth. The State is the Spirit of the People itself.  The actual State is animated by this spirit.   Against this Will, other national minds have no rights: that Nation dominates the World." From G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Law,  331.

All the worth which the human being possesses - all spiritual reality, he possesses only through the State. For Truth is the Unity of the universal and subjective Will; and The Universal is to be found in the State, in its laws, its universal and rational arrangements. The State is the Divine Idea as it exists on earth. 

PRIMACY OF THE STATE VS. THE INDIVIDUAL: "In civilized nations, true bravery consists in the readiness to give oneself wholly to the service of the State so that the individual counts but as one among many.  Not personal valor alone is significant; the important aspect lies in self-subordination to the universal cause." From G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Law in Jacob Loewenberg (ed.), Hegel: Selections (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1929), p. 465.

"The origin of a State involves imperious lordship on the one hand, instinctive submission on the other.  Obedience - Lordly power, and the fear inspired by a ruler - in itself implies some degree of voluntary connection. It is not the isolated will of individuals that prevails; individual pretensions are relinquished, and the general will is the essential bond of political union." From G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of History in Jacob Loewenberg (ed.), Hegel: Selections (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1929), p. 398.

THE HISTORICAL IMPORTANCE OF GREAT MEN: "In public opinion all is false and true, but to discover the truth in it is the business of the great man.  The great man of his time is he who expresses the will and the meaning of that time and then brings it to completion; he acts according to the inner spirit and essence of his time, which he realizes.  From G.W.F. Hegel, Philosophy of Law in Jacob Loewenberg (ed.), Hegel: Selections (New York: C. Scribner's Sons, 1929), p. 461.

Koenigsberg's Law of Sacrifice

Wars are fought in order to testify to the power and reality of the state. Death--and memorials erected to honor those who have died—constitute a demonstration of Hegel's idea: the function of the state is to compel human beings to submit and persuade its citizens to die.