In his review essay, Professor Sam Cox notes that my point that nations grant their leaders the right to kill is “unsettling.” However, I am not simply saying that nation-states are given the right to kill “others.” The central focus of my book is that nations give leaders the right to kill their own people. Carolyn Marvin claims that “blood sacrifice preserves the nation.” The totem secret, she says, is knowledge that “society depends on the death of its own members at the hands of the group.

In the First World War, nations across Europe embraced and enacted this proposition—that their continued existence depended upon their capacity to sacrifice the lives of human beings. What a monumental blood-letting this war was: 9 million killed, 21 million wounded, and millions more missing in action.

German men were sent to the Western front “like sheep to the slaughter.” Two million German men died (and millions more wounded and/or maimed) in the First World War. Hitler participated in the War throughout its duration. Having witnessed hundreds of his comrades blown to bits—experienced battle and the slaughter of young German men—he was acutely aware of warfare’s consequences.
knew what had occurred during the First World War, but could not bear to acknowledge that his own nation and its leaders had been responsible for the slaughter.

This is where his odyssey began: In Hitler’s incapacity to face the traumatic reality that his beloved nation had caused the death of 2 million Germans. Hitler could not bear to say that Germany was killing its own soldiers. Indeed, for each one of us, it is painful and deeply traumatic to confront the idea that nations seek to kill their own people.

Below an entry in a German regimental diary reporting what occurred when British troops pushed through to the German line on the second day of the Battle of the Loos in September 1915. The numerical superiority of the British troops was considerable, but several dozen German machine-guns faced them:

“Ten columns of extended line could clearly be discerned. Each advancing column was estimated at more than a thousand men, offering such a target as had never been seen before, or thought possible.

Never had the machine-gunners such straightforward work to do nor done it so effectively. They traversed to and fro along the enemy’s ranks unceasingly. The men stood and fired triumphantly into the mass of men advancing across open grassland. As the entire field of fire was covered with the enemy’s infantry, the effect was devastating and they could be seen falling literally in hundreds.”

       It is difficult to conceive what occurred during this battle. However, it seems that the following is what happened: as the first row of men was slaughtered—mowed down by machine-gun fire—the next row of  British soldiers appeared in full view of the German gunners, also to be mowed down. The slaughter persisted, but British soldiers did not seek to evade the bullets. Proud and honorable men  they continued to walk into machine-gun fire, row after row after row.

This passage illustrates how battles were fought during the First World War. The primary battle strategy consisted of soldiers getting out of trenches en masse and moving toward the enemy line.

History books document that this is what occurred. It is not difficult to establish the facts. However, it is difficult is to accept the facts, to come to terms with the truth. For four years—from August 1914 to November 1918—soldiers were asked to get out of trenches and to run forward into artillery shells and machine-gun fire. The result—9 million dead—means that an average of 6,000 men were killed each day during the First World War.

 Although battle after battle was futile, the strategy persisted. The reality of what occurred is difficult to grasp and hold onto. One’s mind boggles. Why was this happening? Stepping back from the fray, the following sentence captures the essence of the First World War: Nations sent young men to be slaughtered.

How is one to explain the monumental destructiveness of this war? Why did leaders and nations persist in a battle strategy that accomplished nothing? Historians are unable to provide satisfactory answers. At conferences, I've attended, they often sometimes declare, “The generals were stupid.” Scholarly treatises fatuously proclaim that military strategists “underestimated the power of the machine-gun.”

In the extraordinary video series, “The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century” (1996), Yale professor Jay  Winter (co-producer and co-writer of the series) provides voiceover in a tone of pained, baffled bewilder- ment, concluding: