In Mein Kampf, Hitler put forth a theory of the relationship between human beings and society, stating that the capacity for civilization—“creating and building culture”—arose out of the individual’s willingness to “renounce putting forward his personal opinion and interests” and to “sacrifice both in favor of the large group.”

The ability to establish “comprehensive communities,” Hitler explained, grew out of readiness to "subordinate purely personal interests.” This state of mind subordinates is the “first premise for every truly human community.”

Hitler came down entirely on the side of "society,” elevating devotion to Germany as an absolute value, individuals significant only insofar as their lives contributed to the national community.

What was special about the “Aryan,” Hitler said, was his willingness to sacrifice himself for the community. The self-sacrificing will to “give one’s personal labor and if necessary one’s own life for others” was “most strongly developed in the Aryan,” who was not greatest in his mental qualities, but in the extent of his willingness to “put all his abilities in the service of the community.”

Hitler summed up his philosophy with the term Pflichterfüllung, which meant

Not to be self-sufficient but to serve the community. The basic attitude from which such activity arises, we call—to distinguish it from egoism and selfishness—idealism. By this, we understand only the individual’s capacity to make sacrifices for the community, his fellow men. True idealism is nothing but the subordination of the interests and life of the individual to the community.

Hitler’s Ideology of Death

The fundamental term in Hitler’s ideology was that of sacrifice, willingness of the individual to give his life for the community:

• “The Aryan willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it.”
• “The idea of military service dawned on my lads in terms of the living consciousness of the duty to fight for the existence of our people by sacrificing the life of the individual, always and forever, at all times and places.”
• “To be ‘national’ means to act with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people and, if necessary, even to die for it.”

Joseph Goebbels put forth a similar philosophy. In his semi-autographical diary-novel, Michael (1931), Goebbels said that what characterized the modern German was not so intellect, but the ability to “give oneself to a cause unreservedly, to sacrifice oneself, to devote oneself to one’s people.” Goebbels defined socialism as “fanatic of love: the capacity for self-sacrifice.” We modern Germans, he said, are “Christ socialists.”

Hitler’s ideology, at its core, was an ideology of death. However, Hitler’s attachment to death cannot be separated from his attachment to Germany nation.

For Hitler, there was no separation between the idea of sacrificial death in battle and the ideal of devotion to one’s nation.

Soldiers as the Embodiment of Virtue

If the essence of virtue is willingness to sacrifice for the community, then the most virtuous individual is the soldier—willing to die for his country. During the First World War, Protestant clergy extolled the life of the German soldier. In his study, The Gospel of Nationalism: German Patriotic Preaching from Napoleon to Versailles (1986), Arlie Hoover summarized themes that appeared in pastors’ sermons during the Great War.

Far from being sinful, the life of the soldier was portrayed as the most “exemplary live one could choose,” a life of moral courage, devotion and self-denial. The soldier must, like Christ, be ready to "place his earthly life on the altar of love;” to “die for family, brethren, or country.” He must say: “It is not necessary that I live, but it is necessary that I do my duty.”

Many German preachers looked upon the warrior’s death as “the most beautiful of all deaths.” The hero’s death resembled the “free-will offering of Christ himself,” who gave his life voluntarily for his brethren.

One pastor expressed this idea precisely: “German nationality and Christianity agree at their very core in heroism—nothing is greater than to leave your life for your friends & your brethren. Both are fulfilled in the hero’s death.”

The German soldier was often compared with Christ in that he was a human being willing to give his life for his people and community. The soldier—by virtue of his willingness to die for his country—was the most virtuous and moral of all human beings.

To Die for Germany

In To Die for Germany: Heroes in the Nazi Pantheon (1990), J. W. Baird wrote about this German philosophy of sacrificial death. Walter Flex, a German author, soldier and idealist who fought in the First World War, ended his The Wanderer between Two Worlds (1916) with this thought: “We died for Germany’s glory. Flower, Germany, as garland of death to us!” Flex’s benediction “glorified all the dead of the war.”

During the Great War, propagandists and poets alike joined hands in “exalting the blood sacrifice of the young of Germany,” thus “transforming carnage into ethereal national revelation.” In Germany, heroic death in war became a “philosophy of life.”

Hitler’s Glorification of Sacrificial Death

• “More than once, thousands and thousands of young Germans have stepped forward with self-sacrificing resolve to sacrifice their young lives freely and joyfully on the altar of the beloved fatherland.”
• “The young regiments went to their death in Flanders crying “Deutschland ueber Alles in der Welt.”
• “In the sacred ground the best comrades slumbered, still almost children, who had run to their death with gleaming eyes for the one true fatherland.”
• “The most precious blood sacrificed itself joyfully, in the faith that it was preserving the independence and freedom of the fatherland.”

Hitler embraced a philosophy of sacrificial death, refusing to complain about his comrades’ deaths in the First World War.

To comprehend Nazism, one enters into Hitler’s philosophy of obedience unto death. When people think of the “Aryan race,” they visualize a brutal Nazi “superman.” This was not Hitler's conception of the German soldier.

Hitler dreamt of an omnipotent community, which required  that individuals submit absolutely. Far from being a superman, Nazi soldiers were slaves, actually, worse than slaves: they were required to die their country asked them to do so.