Unwillingness to Die for the Community

The Aryan or good German or hero was understood by Hitler as someone willing to sacrifice for the community; whereas the Jew for Hitler represented someone unwilling to do so. Hitler’s philosophy of culture (presented in Mein Kampf) revolved around the concept of “idealism,” that is, “subordination of the interests and life of the individual to the community.” The Jew, Hitler claimed, represented the “mightiest counterpart to the Aryan” in that he lacked completely the “most essential requirement for a cultured people,” the “idealistic attitude”. Jews, Hitler believed, “lacked idealism in any form.”

Whereas Aryans were willing to sacrifice for the community, Jews were characterized by the “absolute absence of all sense of sacrifice.” Hitler equated this absence with “cowardice.” In short, Aryans were a heroic people willing to die for a community or country, whereas Jews were a cowardly people, unwilling to die for a community or country.

Writing in Mein Kampf, Hitler reports that when in hospital recovering from a leg injury in 1916, he was astonished to hear men “bragging about their own cowardice.” Acknowledging that there was cursing and beefing at the Front, Hitler says that this was never an incitement to shirk duty or glorification of the coward: The coward “still passed as a coward and as nothing else,” worthy of contempt, just as admiration was given to the “real hero.”

But in the hospital, Hitler says, it was almost the opposite. The most “unscrupulous agitators” did the talking and attempted through their “contemptible eloquence” to make the decent soldiers seem ridiculous and to “hold up the spineless coward as an example.” One “wretched scoundrel,” Hitler says, boasted that he had pulled his hand through a barbed-wire entanglement in order to be sent to the hospital. This “poison fellow” went so far in his insolent effrontery as to “represent his own cowardice as an emanation of higher bravery than the hero’s death of an honest soldier.”

Everything that followed in Hitler’s career grew out of the distinction he made between heroes who were willing to die for the country and cowardly shirkers who were not. These cowardly shirkers, Hitler believed, rejected the idea that death in battle constituted an honorable and noble sacrifice. Hitler’s rage was directed toward people who—he imagined—were unwilling to die for the country.

Nations Have the Right to Kill: Hitler, the Holocaust and War by Richard Koenisgberg
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Jewish Shirkers

When Hitler was discharged from the hospital and transferred to his replacement battalion in Munich, he reports in Mein Kampf that he could “no longer recognize the city.” He discovered “anger, discontent and cursing” wherever he went. The mood was miserable: “To be a slacker passed almost as a sign of higher wisdom,” while “loyal steadfastness was considered a symptom of inner weakness and narrow-mindedness.”

“Loyal steadfastness” was to characterize Hitler for the rest of his life. He would remain faithful to the idea of Germany and embrace the ideal of sacrifice up until the moment he committed suicide on April 30, 1945. What Hitler could not bear was the idea that some people refused to embrace the idea of sacrificial death in battle. Jews symbolized rejection of the idea that dying for one’s country is beautiful and fitting. Jews symbolized the idea that warfare is useless and meaningless.

As Hitler wandered around Munich, he claims to have discovered that the offices were “filled with Jews. Nearly every clerk was a Jew and nearly every Jew was a clerk.” Hitler says that he was amazed at this “plethora of warriors of the chosen people” and could not help comparing them with their “rare representatives at the front.” Hitler believed that the slacker par excellence was the Jew. Jews were a people who avoided military service and were unwilling to sacrifice for Germany.

Was Munich really filled with Jewish clerks? Did German Jews seek to avoid military service? Did German Jews—as some claimed at the time—die with less frequency than non-Jewish Germans during the First World War? Evidence suggests that the death rate for German Jews in the First World War was the same as for non-Jewish Germans. But in any case the answer to any of the questions I’ve posed above does not matter.

To summarize my conclusion after many years of research: it didn’t matter what the Jews did. Hitler’s attitude was not rooted in reality or “objective” considerations. Hitler projected certain ideas or fantasies into the Jew, who came to possess a profound symbolic meaning for Hitler, that was independent or separate from what Jews did or actually were. What did “the Jew” mean for Hitler? Jews symbolized the idea that sacrificial death for one’s nation is useless and meaningless.

Why Didn’t Hitler Abandon Warfare?

Hitler understood the horror of battle. He was there. He experienced artillery shells crashing down upon the German trenches—blowing his comrades to smithereens. He saw the dead bodies decaying on the field of battle. Hitler himself was injured—and also blinded by a poison gas attack. One would imagine that he would have been revolted by battle; that he would turn away from this traumatic experience, abandoning warfare forever.

But he does not. What’s more, astonishingly, Hitler conveys the death of his comrades in beatific terms, writing as if this was something that they enjoyed. He claims that “Thousands and thousands of young Germans” had stepped forward to “sacrifice their young lives freely and joyfully on the altar of the beloved fatherland.” He says that during the First World War the most precious blood “sacrificed itself joyfully;” and claims that his comrades—still almost children, “Had run to their death with gleaming eyes for the one true fatherland.”

Many people who embrace or endorse warfare are able to do so because they’ve never been there. They haven’t looked closely at what happens to soldiers in battle. Hitler, however, was not an armchair warrior. He’d experienced the actualities—the horror of war—yet still maintained an idealized, sentimental conception of dying in battle.

Hitler’s capacity to overcome squeamishness, I’ve suggested, grew out of his profound attachment to the German nation, that idea or entity in the name of which all the dying, maiming and killing occurred. Yet we may assume that Hitler—a human being—continued to be disturbed, perhaps even traumatized by what he had seen and experienced. Further, Hitler did question the meaning of the First World War: Had it all been in vain? Did millions of men die for nothing?

The Jew = Sacrificial Death is Meaningless

In short, part of Hitler continued to recognize that war is awful and futile. Hitler, however, refuses to stay with this understanding or insight. Rather, he denies war is awful and futile and projects this understanding or insight into the Jew. The Jew symbolized for Hitler the idea that sacrificial death in warfare is meaningless and useless. Hitler’s struggle against the Jew represents his struggle to deny this perception. Hitler seeks to “kill off” his understanding that sacrificial death in battle is of no value.

According to Hitler, civilization grows out of the willingness of individuals to sacrifice for the sake of the community. If there is no willingness to sacrifice, there can be no civilization. Carolyn Marvin theorizes that “blood sacrifice preserves the nation.” Marvin claims that this truth is the “totem secret.” Yet Hitler seems to have understood this truth or secret. He seems to have realized that without blood sacrifice there can be no nation.

The Jew for Hitler symbolized refusal to engage in blood sacrifice—rejection of the idea that it is necessary to die for a country. Jews were a threat, therefore, not only to Germany, but to all national communities. Without sacrificial death, Hitler felt, nations and civilizations would fall apart. Hitler sought to kill Jews in order to kill off this threat, thereby rescuing civilization. Killing Jews meant killing off the idea that sacrificial death is pathetic, useless and in vain.