The Jew in the death camp revealed the true meaning of what happened to soldiers in WWI: Obedience unto death. Submission to the state (but without “honor and glory”). By degrading Jews in this way, one can perceive the true condition of the soldier: someone who is sent to be slaughtered by the nation-state.

The Jew in the death camp enacted the Nazi's own experience of total submission, now experienced as degradation and abject dependence. The Jew symbolized the Nazi’s own posture of self-negation and sacrificial submission. The Jew enraged the SS-man because what he saw was an extreme version of his own posture, obedience and abject submission taken once step further.

Germany sent its soldiers to the front in the First World War. They went “like sheep to the slaughter.” The German nation and its leaders compelled young men to enter battles where there was a high probability that they would be killed or maimed. Two-million Germans died in the First World War and over four million were wounded. Generals like von Hindenburg and Ludendorff were responsible for mass death, even as they were glorified as “leaders” who were waging a heroic struggle for German victory. Hitler fought in the First World War, a soldier who experienced what occurred, witnessed the degradation and death of his comrades.

When Hitler became the leader of Germany, he merely followed in the steps of the leaders before him. As Germany had sent young men to be slaughtered in the First World War, so Germany would send young men to be slaughtered in the Second World War. Is this not the role and privilege of a national leader? To seek conquest and glory, and to sacrifice willingly the lives of young men while waging war.

The Final Solution grew out of Hitler’s perception that the role of a leader is to pursue the goals of a nation by ordering people to die. If no one objected when a nation sent its soldiers to die, why Hitler reflected would anyone object if he sent Jews—mortal enemies of the German people—to their deaths? The Final Solution brought into being an alternative form of “dying for the country,” another version of “obedience unto death.” If Hitler could send German soldiers to die, why could he not order the death of the Jewish people? The logic of genocide proceeded based on the logic of war.

Richard Koenigsberg