Website for Nations Have the Right to Kill We assume that nations go to war when they are unable to resolve “conflicts.” But what if this interpretation is backwards? In Nations Have the Right to Kill, Richard Koenigsberg proposes that societies often provoke conflicts in order to give nations the opportunity to kill—and to ask people to die. This revolutionary book changes forever our understanding of the meaning of war and genocide. Hitler fought in the First World War and witnessed the death and maiming of hundreds of his comrades. At the war’s end, he was the victim of a poison gas attack. Two million German men died in the First World War and over 4 million were wounded. Hitler realized that young Germans had been sent to die by the nation and its leaders—“like sheep to the slaughter.” One might imagine that Hitler would have turned against war after experiencing such awful things, but he did not. Upon becoming Germany’s Führer, Hitler immediately began planning for the next World War, declaring that he was prepared to answer for the blood-sacrifice of another generation of young Germans and would not hesitate because of the “10 million young men that he would be sending to their death.” CLICK HERE FOR ORDERING INFORMATION In Nations Have the Right to Kill, Richard Koenigsberg shows that the Holocaust grew out of Hitler’s understand of warfare. German soldiers began to die in great numbers in the Soviet Union. But if Germans were dying, should Jews be permitted to survive? Hitler reasoned that if he had the right to send his soldiers into the hell of war “without regret for the spilling of precious German blood,” then naturally he also had the right to spill the blood of Jews—mortal enemies of the German people. If society gave Hitler the right as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces to send the “best” people to die—young German men in the prime of life—why would he not also have the right to send the “worst” people to die? Koenigsberg shows how genocide grew out of the logic of warfare. It was as if Hitler was conveying a message: This is what happens when human beings give over their bodies to the nation-state and become obedient unto death. Hitler insisted that a soldier’s willingness to sacrifice his life was honorable and noble, but also knew better. He had seen his comrades blown apart by machine-gun fire and had witnessed German soldiers choking and suffocating from poison gas. According to Koenigsberg, Hitler knew how horrible war was, but was unable to say this. Instead, he provided a demonstration. The Final Solution began in the Soviet Union, where Jews were victims of machine-gun fire. In the death camps, Jews suffocated when they inhaled poison gas. Jews—like soldiers—died at the behest of Germany and its leaders. Yet no one would claim that the death of Jews was honorable and noble. What Hitler and the Nazis did was to depict dying for the country—submission to the nation-state—stripped of comforting words like “honor” and “nobility.” Hitler is viewed as an anomaly, but perhaps he was actually an extreme case of the normal. Nationalism is the most common political ideology and Nazism represented its apogee. What Hitler did, Koenigsberg demonstrates, was to carry this ordinary belief—that Nations Have the Right to Kill—to a sickening, terrifying conclusion. NATIONS HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL:
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Why did Hitler initiate the Final Solution and take Germany to war? Based on analysis of Hitler's rhetoric—the words, images and metaphors contained within his writing and speeches—Koenigsberg's study reveals the "hidden narratives" that were the source of genocide. Hitler's actions—the history he created—followed as a consequence of his fantasy that by destroying the Jewish “disease” Germany might live forever.
"This work deserves to be an instant classic. With care and caution, Koenigsberg remains close to the data. Koenigsberg suggests that what is at stake is larger than an explanation of Hitler, Nazism, or even nationalism: it is, rather, an explanation of culture itself. Koenigsberg's genius has unlocked many of the secrets of a timeless drama." —Howard F. Stein, Professor of Anthropology, University of Oklahoma
The Nation: A Study in Ideology and Fantasy
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Why do people identify so profoundly with nations? This monograph explores the sources of the power of the ideology of nationalism, and its relationship to racism, revolution and totalitarianism. How may we account for the persistence of a belief system that demonizes "the other" and leads to profound forms of violence? Koenigsberg shows how nationalism articulates shared fantasies performed on the stage of society.
“This is a truly bold and provocative treatise. The nation is seen as the symbolic embodiment of a communal ego, cleansed of the ‘badness’ introduced by a particular class of persons within a nation’s boundaries whose ‘removal’ by whatever means is easily rationalized if goodness is to be restored. The interpretations are intriguing and illuminating, the scholarship creative and careful. Koenigsberg provides a provocative account of the profound interplay of exceptional political commitments and psychopathology.” —Dan B. Thomas, Professor of Political Science in the journal Political Psychology
The Fantasy of Oneness and the Struggle to Separate:
Towards a Psychology of Culture
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The fantasy of oneness refers to our desire to fuse our sense of being with objects in the outer world. Koenigsberg shows how our relationship to culture is linked to conflicts surrounding fusion and separation. We attach to powerful objects in the external world in our quest to experience a sense of omnipotence. But ambivalence emerges as we experience attachment to cultural objects as oppressive. Society constitutes an arena in which the conflict between the desire to fuse and the struggle to separate are played out.
"During the past few decades, we have become increasingly aware of the psychological dimension of our relationship to nations, groups and leaders through such works as Freud's Group Psychology and the Analysis of the Ego, Wilhelm Reich's Mass Psychology of Fascism, Ernest Becker's Escape from Evil, and more recently Richard Koenigsberg's The Fantasy of Oneness." —M. D. Faber, Professor of English Literature, University of Victoria, author of Culture and Consciousness
Special Issue of the PEACE REVIEW on "The Psychological Interpretation of War," Edited by Richard A. Koenigsberg and Wendy C. Hamblet
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This definitive publication includes articles by top scholars from around the world.
- Sacrifice, Transcendence and the Soldier, Babak Rahimi
- Group Psychology, Sacrifice and War, Norman Steinhart
- War and the Religious Will to Sacrifice, Patrick Porter
- Memorialization and the Selling of War, Deborah Buffton
- The Mythology of War, Andrew Robinson
- The Manic Ecstasy of War, Wendy C. Hamblet
- Humiliation and the Global War on Terror, Paul Saurette
- Dominance and Submission In Postmodern War Imagery, Myra Mendible
- Guilt and Sacrifice in U.S. Warfare, Carl Mirra
- Male Gender Instability and War, Jeannette Marie Mageo
- Combat Motivation, Johan M.G. Van Der Dennen