WARFARE AS A STRUGGLE OF LIFE AGAINST DEATH
Richard A. Koenigsberg

Before the beginning of the Second World War, Hitler stated that Germany was preparing for the “life-and-death-struggle” that soon would commence. We are fighting, Hitler declared, for “our naked beings” and the “existence of the German people.”

Nobody can avoid fighting, Hitler said, if he “does not want to go under.” The war against England and France was a matter of “life against death.” The German people faced a struggle for their “existence or annihilation.” The question was whether Germany had the will to “remain in existence."

Nothing in these statements suggests Hitler was intent upon "conquering the world." Paying close attention to Hitler's words, we  understand his thought processes from the inside. Hitler’s thinking about the Second World War was entirely consistent with his thinking that generated the Holocaust. He was responding to his belief that forces were working to disintegrate the German nation and  He believed that to master or come to terms with these destructive forces, it would be necessary to wage a life against death struggle to prevent the German nation from disintegrating.

Finally, at the very end, Hitler acknowledged that international Jewry was too powerful. Nevertheless, he proudly declared, after six years of fighting and the setbacks faced by Germany, the war would go down in history as the most “glorious and heroic manifestation of the struggle for the existence of a nation.”