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WARFARE AS SPIRITUALITY
Goebbels declared that to be a socialist meant to "subordinate the I to the Thou, sacrifice the personality for the whole." He defined Socialism as "service, renunciation for individuals and a claim for the whole, fanatic of love, courage to sacrifice, resignation for the Volk."
A U.S. Department of State Booklet written during the Second World War explicated Nazi ideology as that force and conviction which "consecrates its whole life to the service of an idea, a faith, a task or a duty even when it knows that the destruction of its own life is certain."
Hitler was the greatest devotees of the sacrificial religion of German nationalism. He stated in Mein Kampf that in the First World War, "The most precious blood sacrificed itself joyfully" in the faith that it was "preserving the independence and freedom of the fatherland."
He noted with pride that more than once thousands and thousands of young Germans had "stepped forward with self-sacrificing resolve to sacrifice their young lives freely and joyfully on the altar of the beloved fatherland."
Warfare for the Nazis was bound to their ideals of service, faith, and courage to sacrifice. The barbaric results were generated by a posture of loyalty--devotion to the German community and its leaders.
MARTYRDOM IN GERMANY AND JAPAN
A128-page booklet entitled "The Secret of Japan's Strength" was published in 1943 by the Nazi Party's publishing house. Author Albrecht Fürst von Urach writes with admiration about the samurai's "readiness to give his life" and "willingness to die." In sacrificial death in battle, von Urach says, the Japanese soldier finds "the most perfect fulfillment of his life."
Death on the battlefield makes the Japanese soldier a kind of god, a "Kami," who does not dwell far from the living, but rather always and ever joins with millions of others to "hold his protective hand over the Japanese nation and people."
Von Urach writes about the "enormous power that the emperor cult gives the Japanese people." The "materialistic peoples of America and England," he explains, cannot comprehend this form of state religion; the enormous spiritual strength the emperor cult gives the Japanese people.
Japan's army, von Urach says, has always favored the "strength of the spirit over the strength of the material." National Socialist Germany therefore is in the best position to understand Japan since "we and the other nations of the Axis" are fighting for the "same goals that Japan is fighting for." National Socialists, von Urach declares, also put the "spirit over the material."
Nazi warfare was based on a concept of spirituality that insisted that individuals should practice self-renunciation in the name of devotion to a sacred ideal. Nazi spirituality grew out of the idea that one should be willing to sacrifice one's life in the name of the national community.
We think of the Japanese of the Second World War as fanatic warriors willing to become martyrs for their nation and its Emperor. It is estimated that one-million, three-hundred thousand Japanese soldiers died in the Second World War, and approximately five-hundred thousands civilians, for a total of one-million-eight-hundred thousand deaths.
What were the results for Germany in the Second World War? It is estimated that four-million soldiers died and nearly one-million-six-hundred-thousand civilians, for a total of approximately five-million-six-hundred thousand Germans who died in the Second World War.
While the Japanese fought and died in the name of their nation and Emperor, the German people fought and died in the name of Hitler and Germany--"for Reich and Fuhrer." Their posture of sacrificial devotion toward Hitler was far more lethal for the German people than was the Japanese posture of devotion to their emperor. Yet we do not think of German soldiers as suicidal, or as martyrs.
People often claim to be astonished by suicide bombers. However, historians rarely draw attention to the stance of sacrificial self-destruction that lies at the heart of western warfare in the Twentieth Century: the magnitude of slaughter. Western scholars and commentators are still fast asleep: dreaming the dream of "rationality." Within the dream of rationality, we pretend that wars are fought for "real reasons."
WARFARE AS SACRIFICIAL COMPETITION
Bin Laden taunted Americans in 1996 and on many occasions thereafter. The United States had fled from Mogadishu, he noted, after only a few soldiers had been killed. Where was the "new world order?" Saddam Hussein similarly was contemptuous of the ability of Americans to wage war, believing Iraq could win because the United States lacked the stomach to "take casualties."
Whereas their followers were filled with spiritual fervor--willing to sacrifice themselves for a cause--Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein believed Americans were materialistic and corrupt--lacking devotion to ideals, and therefore unwilling to sacrifice their lives.
The ability to wage war is not separate from a nation's willingness to accept casualties. If a nation wages war, it is inevitable that some people will die. Leaders must persuade soldiers and the populace that the cause for which the war is being fought is meaningful. Sacrificial death must be presented as "necessary."
It is clear that capacity or willingness to take casualties in the West--to send people into battle to die in the name of a sacred ideal--is not as powerful as it once was. However, waging war still requires belief in the idea that it is worthwhile for soldiers to die in the name of one's society's ideals.
Bin Laden and Saddam Hussein were mocking America and its leaders: "You are soft, lacking in spiritual values. Unlike us, you are corrupt and materialistic; do not possess ideals. Your people do not believe in a cause for which they are willing to sacrifice their lives."
George W. Bush responded with defiance: "Do not think that Americans lack ideals. We too possess sacred values for which we are willing to die and kill. As you Moslems are fight and die for Allah, so we Americans fight and die for freedom and democracy." And so the war in Iraq went on and on--as a form of sacrificial competition.
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