The key phrase allowing us to understand Nazism and the Final Solution was Hitler's idea of obedience unto death. This oath of the SS man led to the Holocaust, but not in an obvious way. The phrase was intended for the German people, required to go into battle when asked to do so, to endure endless bombing attacks, etc. Hitler professed to have NO GUILT about asking his people to die. Germans, embracing the ideology of obedience unto death, died in monumental numbers.

But then Hitler had a paranoid insight: “If I can ask my own soldiers to die (and have no regrets about asking them to do so), why can’t I also ask Jews to die?” Hitler's willingness to ask his own people to die was the independent variable and the Holocaust the dependent variable.

In each case, the political objective was fulfilled: the deaths of vast numbers of people.