The Body Politic Feeds Upon Human Bodies
Richard A. Koenigsberg

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 AZTEC WARRIORS/WESTERN SOLDIERS: The Body Politic Feeds Upon Human Bodies

The First World War was undertaken and perpetuated under the assumption that the “lives” of nations were more significant than the lives of human beings.

Germany, France, Great Britain--and many other nations--were fed with the bodies and blood of soldiers—sacrificial victims—to keep these entities alive.

“The individual must die so that the nation might live” is a phrase that has been uttered frequently during the last two-hundred years of Western warfare. What does this phrase mean?

The First World War enacted this proposition: nations were imagined to come alive insofar as individuals died—insofar as nations were fed with the bodies and blood of sacrificed victims.