Richard Koenigsberg’s work, particularly in Nations Have the Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust, and War, frames the soldier as a sacrificial victim within a broader sacrificial logic that underpins both war and genocide Archive+1. Drawing on the Girardian theory of sacrificial scapegoating, Koenigsberg argues that civilizations maintain unity by deflecting internal conflict outward — toward a single, identifiable “scapegoat” — which can be a minority group or, in the case of war, members of one’s own nation www.libraryofsocialscience.com+1.

The Sacrificial Mechanism

According to Rene Girard, sacrificial scapegoating is a deep-seated social mechanism: violence is concentrated on one group, allowing the rest of society to avoid internal discord.

In Koenigsberg’s adaptation, this mechanism can be “insider violence” — the desire to sacrifice members of one’s own group, especially the young and the strong, to affirm the sacredness of the nation-state Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. The soldier becomes the visible, expendable victim whose death “affirms the existence of this sacred object, the nation” www.foundationforthestudyofpoliticalpathology.org.

War as a Devotional Act

Koenigsberg sees war not just as a political or territorial contest, but as a ritual of sacrifice. Death in battle is the “supreme act of devotion,” a way to prove the nation’s reality and vitality www.foundationforthestudyofpoliticalpathology.org.

The soldier’s body and blood are seen as materializing the nation’s existence — a “body politic” that must be sustained through sacrifice Archive. This transforms war into a kind of potlatch, where the nation “comes alive” through the killing of its own people Archive.

Hitler’s Ideology and the Soldier

In Koenigsberg’s analysis of Hitler, the soldier’s role as sacrificial victim is central to Nazi ideology. Hitler’s writings and speeches depict the duty to die for Germany as a sacred obligation, stripping the act of honor and framing it as a necessary part of the nation’s survival Archive+1. The willingness to die is presented as proof of loyalty and virility, while the survival of the “worst” is paradoxically linked to the nation’s strength Archive.

Broader Implications

Koenigsberg’s thesis challenges the conventional view of war as defensive or honorable. Instead, he suggests that war is often produced by a society’s desire to sacrifice its own young men, using death to sustain the nation’s mythic and political reality www.foundationforthestudyofpoliticalpathology.org. This logic can be extended to genocide, where the “right to kill” is justified through the same sacrificial framework Archive.