The mass murder of the Jews was the consummation of Hitler’s fundamental beliefs and ideological conviction. The nexus between ideas and act has seldom been as evident in human history with such manifest consistency. Hitler’s ideas about the Jews were at the center of his mental world. They shaped his worldview and his political ambitions, forming the matrix of his ideology and the core of National Socialist doctrine. Few ideas in world history achieved such a fatal potency.

Yes, this is what Hitler was all about: the mass-murder of the Jews. What a strange aspiration--that human beings somehow have managed to "normalize." 

The "Second World War" was, in actuality, an epiphenomenon, especially the war on the Eastern front--subordinate to Hitler's desire to kill Jews. The word "conquest" barely appears in Mein Kampf (please check it out). 

Jews in the Soviet Union were called "Jewish-Bolsheviks." Same difference. I used to play a game with my cousins at Thanksgiving (sitting at a separate table from the adults). "Kill the world." My cousin Jill got a big kick out of it. I wanted to kill the world in order so that no one would interfere when I went to the candy store--and took possession of all the bubble gum in the candy-store to myself (the "economic theory of history").

Yes, "killing Jews," what an infantile, ridiculous, useless form of behavior. Yet such "world historic events" (one of Hitler's favorite phrases) is the stuff of "history." It's written up in the text books. It must be real and important. Kill the world. Have access to all the bubble-gum in the world.

Richard Koenigsberg