Relationship between the First World War and the Holocaust:
Summing Things Up (Final Solution)

Time for a summing up (see below): Lloyd George said that in the First World War there was no limit to the number of men who were "thrown into the furnace to feed the flames of war." Harry Pearson spoke about the First World War as a great force shoveling warm human hearts and bodies by the million into the furnace.” 

And after the war Lloyd George stated that he knew what his men had been through. He had been there at the door of the furnace...and saw his men march into the furnace."

Hitler too had been there--had been thrown into and experienced the furnace of the First World War. In creating the Holocaust, Hitler translated this metaphor into reality: human beings were literarily thrown into a furnace.

Holocaust victims replicated the experience of the soldiers of the First World War. Hitler sent a message. He understood that nations were throwing men into a furnace; that young men were being incinerated.

Now, Hitler performed a diabolical move, which also conveys profound insight. Jews took the place of the soldiers of the First World War: they were incinerated in a furnace.

But in the case of the Holocaust, there was no illusion of heroism. The Jew represented a debased or degraded version of the soldier of the First World War; demonstration that it is not sweet and beautiful to die for a country.

Richard Koenigsberg
“Every nation was profligate of its manpower and conducted the war as if there were no limit to the number of men who were fit to be thrown into the furnace to feed the flames of war.”
Harry Pearson, reported by Winifred Holtby
"Pearson told me about all the enormities he had seen at the front: the driving - the callous, perpetual driving by some great force which shoveled warm human hearts and bodies, warm human hopes, by the million into the furnace.”
David Lloyd George, speech of Nov. 24, 1918 on
British soldiers in the First World War:
"I cannot think what these men have gone through. I have been there at the door of the furnace and witnessed it. I saw them march into the furnace.”