Killing in the name of a Sacred Object

Nazism provides a model of how sacred values generate death and destruction on a vast scale--based on attachment or fusion with a sacred object.  Heinrich Himmler—speaking of the extermination of the Jewish People in a speech delivered to SS officers and Nazi officials at Posen in October 1943—declared: “We had the moral right, the duty to our own people, to kill these people who wanted to kill us.” Himmler concluded—speaking about Final Solution: "We can say that we have carried out this most difficult task out of love for our own people.”