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Editor's note: In his book, Kent Shifferd summarizes the sacrificial theory of warfare by stating that Koenigsberg "recasts the perception of war as normative, glorious and honorable" suggesting rather that war is about the "production of corpses and mutilated bodies."
This theory is disturbing, to say the least. Koenigsberg has presented evidence supporting it for twenty years. Shifferd concludes his analysis by posing the question: "How close are we to admitting the truth of this terrible hypothesis?"
How close are we?
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Kent D. Shifferd on Koenigsberg’s sacrificial theory of warfare in
From War to Peace: A Guide to the Next Hundred Years (2011)
“It is disturbing to consider how the minds of young men are manipulated to get them to kill. But there is an even more disturbing hypothesis. Scholar Richard Koenigsberg argues that war is the result of a desire on the part of a society to sacrifice its own young men. Koenigsberg recasts the perception of war as normative, glorious and honorable. War is about the production of corpses and mutilated bodies. While men say they go to war for honor, or territory, or self-defense, or empire, in fact they go to war to prove that the nation is real.
“In war, Koenigsberg writes, ‘actual human bodies are sacrificed in the name of perpetuating a magical entity, the body politic. Sacrificial acts affirm the existence of this sacred object, the nation. Entering into battle is a devotional act, with death in war the supreme act of devotion.’ Lincoln spoke at Gettysburg of ‘The last full measure of devotion,’ what we commonly call the ‘supreme sacrifice.’ How close are we to admitting the truth of this terrible hypothesis?”
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