Trenches as mass-graves: World War I (left) & the Holocaust (right) The Holocaust victims (six-million dead) symbolized the soldiers of the First World War (nine-million dead). The Holocaust conveyed death at the hands of the nation-state: stripped of honor and glory.

Omer Bartov has written a great deal about the Holocaust and warfare. His deepest insight appeared, however, in Murder in Our Midst: The Holocaust, Industrial Killing, & Representation (1996) when he hypothesized a direct connection between the the First World War and the Holocaust--when he observed that the “very concept of mass-killing of human beings by states”—the genocide of the Jews—was “lifted directly from the Great war”—the realities of 1914-1918.

The death camps, architecturally and organizationally modeled on the Great War, “incorporated all the attributes of a military environment:” uniforms and barbed wire, watch towers and roll calls, hierarchy and order, drill and commands.

The Holocaust was “militarized genocide.” What was present during the First World War was also present at the death camps: the barbed wire, machine guns, charred bodies, the gas, the uniforms, and the military discipline.

The Holocaust was “almost the perfect reenactment of the Great War,” with the important correction that “all the perpetrators were on one side and all the victims on the other.” This reenactment was “totally lethal for the inmates and totally safe for the guards."