WARFARE AS A STATE-SANCTIONED RITUAL OF SELF-DESTRUCTION

Richard Koenigsberg’s central thesis in Nations Have the Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust, and War is that war is a state-sanctioned ritual of self-destruction — a way for a nation to “prove” its reality through the sacrifice of its own soldiers www.foundationforthestudyofpoliticalpathology.org+1.

According to Koenigsberg, the purpose of war is not primarily territorial conquest, political gain, or self-defense, but the production of corpses and mutilated bodies. These sacrifices serve as “precious ore of confirmation” — tangible proof that the nation is real and its ideology valid www.libraryofsocialscience.com. In this view, dying in battle is the supreme act of devotion, affirming the existence of the “body politic” and the nation’s sacred mission www.foundationforthestudyofpoliticalpathology.org+1.

Koenigsberg argues that ideologies become real to the extent that people die for them. Any death — enemy, soldier, or civilian — can serve the same purpose: demonstrating the truth and power of the ideal. Sacrificial death “gives witness” to the depth of devotion, making the nation’s existence more concrete in the material world.
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He also links this to the idea of warfare as love — the endurance of soldiers is sustained by love for their cause, comrades, family, and country, disguised as duty www.libraryofsocialscience.com. This emotional and ideological drive is what makes the willingness to die so central to the ritual of war.

In sum, for Koenigsberg, the purpose of war is ideological validation through sacrifice: the nation’s survival and legitimacy are affirmed by the death of its own young men, making war both a political and a devotional act www.foundationforthestudyofpoliticalpathology.org+1.