Heinrich Himmler informed his SS-men that they should fully understand that “our lives do not belong to us, but to the Fuhrer and the Reich.” The requirement of the SS-man was that he become "obedient unto death."

Jews in the concentration camps likewise were required to be absolutely obedient--until they met their deaths in gas chambers. 

Jews in the death camps represented a debased or degraded version of the German soldier, the abject condition of a human being whose body has been given over to—taken over by—the nation-state. 

The Holocaust depicted dying for a nation—obedience unto death--stripped of honor and glory. The German soldier killed in battle and Jew killed in a gas chamber represented two sides of the same coin.