FOUNDATION FOR THE STUDY OF POLITICAL PATHOLOGY |
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Andrew Hammer, Executive Director
The Holocaust depicts death at the hands of the nation-state without sugar-coating, suffering and degradation stripped of words like duty, loyalty, and honor. |
Hitler said that if society gave him the “right” to send his own soldiers to die in battle, then why would he not also have the right—why would he regret—sending the Jewish people to die in concentration camps? The logic of genocide followed based on the logic of warfare. |
Our understanding of warfare grows out of research on Adolf Hitler and the Holocaust. What does the Holocaust have to do with war? More than anyone else, Hitler understood the deep structure of the ideology of warfare. SS-men were instructed to become “obedient unto death.” Although many embraced the Nazis’ view of themselves as “supermen,” Hitler, Himmler and Goebbels knew better. The objective of these men was to teach soldiers—as well as other Germans—how to die willingly. |
The Nazis called it the Final Solution. Historians and the general public call it the Holocaust. Whatever one calls it, the intent of Germany was to exterminate the Jewish people. This is clear. But a close reading of statements Hitler made—as the war against the Soviet Union began in mid-1942—reveals that he understood that warfare and the Final Solution were intimately related. |
Hitler declared, “If I don’t mind sending the pick of the German people into the hell of war without the slightest regret over the spilling of precious German blood, then I naturally also have the right to destroy millions of an inferior race that breeds like vermin.” |
In short, Hitler said that if society gave him the “right” to send his own soldiers to die in battle, then why would he not also have the right—why would he regret—sending the Jewish people to die in concentration camps? The logic of genocide followed based on the logic of warfare. |
A characteristic of war is that the death of the soldier on the field of battle is often hidden. The public does not like to know or think about what actually happens on the battlefield. The title of Rene Girard’s book, Things Hidden since the Foundation of the World, tells the story. The thing hidden, according to Girard, was the killing of a “scapegoat,” a human being who existed at the boundaries of society. But one might also view soldiers as human beings who exist at the border of society. They too become scapegoats. |
Anyone who has viewed photographs or descriptions of a battlefield at the end of a war—knows that soldiers often die a miserable, pathetic death. The first victims of the Holocaust similarly suffered miserable, pathetic deaths. These occurred in the Soviet Union when the Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) rounded up Jews from towns, then compelled them to stand or lie in ditches—where they were shot to death. Historians estimate that over a million Jews were killed in this manner. Later, concentration camps became the location of extermination. |
Soldiers were killed on the battlefield; Jews were killed in death camps. However, we understand these deaths differently. We view the death of soldiers as honorable and noble. The death of a Holocaust victim is never understood in these terms. The Holocaust depicts death at the hands of the nation-state without sugar-coating, suffering and degradation stripped of words like duty, loyalty, and honor. |
Paul W. Kahn says that looking at a field of battle after the battle has concluded, “strewn with severed limbs and broken bodies, men disemboweled and beheaded,” it is not clear who is the object of sacrifice. The enemy and the conscript “suffer the same threat and burden of physical destruction.” |
Share your thoughts on this essay by writing a paragraph or two and sending them to:Best regards,Andrew Hammer, Executive Director |
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