OBEDIENCE UNTO DEATH
Although most people condemn state violence (even as we view aggression as a normal dimension of political life), still we are proud of our willingness to die and kill in the name of abstract ideals. By virtue of acts of political violence, we express our devotion to ideas and entities that we consider sacred—greater than the self.
Political aggression conveys power, toughness and masculinity. The sound and fury of battle feels significant and gigantic, as if something very important is at stake. Warfare expresses narcissistic grandiosity.
Yet at the heart of the human experience of political violence lies submission or—as it is called—“sacrifice.” Sacrifice represents the will to subordinate the self to something larger than the self. Throughout history, people have sacrificed their lives for gods and nations. Warfare is intimately tied to the will to sacrifice.
The ideology of the Nazi SS-man revolved around “obedience unto death.” Obedience unto death is the most radical form of political submission. The Nazis glorified—gloried in—their willingness to submit. What is the relationship between the will to become obedient unto death, and political violence? How does willingness to die become converted into the desire to kill?
HITLER’S PHILOSOPHY OF CULTURE
In Mein Kampf (initially published in 1925 and 1926), Hitler presented a theory of the relationship between the individual and culture. Like Freud, Hitler focused on renunciation as the essence of civilization. Society requires that we give up individual desires in the name—for the sake—of the collective. From the beginning of his political career until its very end, Hitler insisted that the individual must devote his life to the collective. “Sacrifice for Germany” constituted the core of Nazi ideology.
In Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that the capacity for civilization—for “creating and building culture”—arises out of the individual’s willingness to “renounce putting forward his personal opinion and interests” and to “sacrifice both in favor of the large group.” Out of this readiness to subordinate personal interests arises the ability to “establish comprehensive communities.” The state of mind that subordinates the interest of the ego to the conservation of the community, Hitler said, is the “first premise for every truly human community.”
What was special about the “Aryan,” Hitler believed, was the extent of his willingness to sacrifice for the community. The self-sacrificing will to “give one’s personal labor and if necessary one’s own life for others,” Hitler said, was “most strongly developed in the Aryan.” The Aryan was “not greatest in his mental qualities as such,” but in the extent of his willingness to “put all his abilities in the service of the community.”
Hitler sums up his philosophy of culture in the term pflichterfüllung, which means “Not to be self-sufficient but to serve the community.” Hitler distinguishes this posture of service from egoism or selfishness, and says it grows out of idealism, meaning the individual’s capacity to “make sacrifices for the community, his fellow man.” True idealism, Hitler declared in Mein Kampf, is nothing but the “subordination of the interests and life of the individual to the community.”
Hitler’s belief-system, then, focused on the requirement that the individual sacrifice for the large group, or community. Hitler never deviated from this ideology. The violence and terror he brought into being grew out of this ideology: Hitler sought to punish those whom, he imagined, were unwilling to devote their lives to the collective—to sacrifice for the community.
GLORIFICATION OF SACRIFICIAL DEATH
Taking the idea of sacrifice a step further, Hitler believed that the individual should be willing to die for the community. He glorified sacrificial death in warfare. According to Nazi ideology, dying for one’s country was the summum bonum: the greatest or supreme good; the principle from which all other moral values were derived.
The Aryan, Hitler said, willingly subordinates his ego to the life of the community and, “if the hour demands, even sacrifices it.” The idea of military service meant consciousness of the duty to fight for the existence of the German people by sacrificing the life of the individual “always and forever, at all times and places.” Nationalism meant acting with a boundless and all-embracing love for the people “and, if necessary, even to die for it.”
After Nazism and the Holocaust, many people tried to believe that Hitler and his ideology were foreign—radically different from anything that previously existed. This is a classic case of “othering.” In actuality, Hitler’s ideology of sacrifice—the foundation of Nazism—lies at the heart of Western political culture.
We valorize and memorialize the death of soldiers—their willingness to “give their lives” for the nation or community. The ultimate hero, finally, is someone who has “died for his country.” The nation for which a soldier dies may be called Germany, or Great Britain, or France, or the United States of America. In our hearts, the dream remains the same. We idealize and idolize those who have made the “supreme sacrifice.”
What was unique about Hitler was his embrace and glorification of the idea of sacrificial death, and the extent to which he promoted this idea. Writing in Mein Kampf, Hitler stated that more than once, thousands upon thousands of young Germans had stepped forward with “self-sacrificing resolve” to sacrifice their young lives “freely and joyfully on the altar of the beloved fatherland.”
Reflecting on the First World War, Hitler observed that the “young regiments went to their death in Flanders” crying “Deutschland ueber Alles in der Welt” (“Germany above everything in the world”). The most precious blood, Hitler declared, “sacrificed itself joyfully” in the “faith that it was preserving the independence and freedom of the fatherland.” Commenting in Mein Kampf on a memorial for German soldiers that he had visited in 1917, Hitler said: “In the sacred ground the best comrades slumbered, still almost children, who had run to their death with gleaming eyes for the one true fatherland.”
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
my friend, you would not tell with such high zest
to children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie:
Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.
–Wilfred Owen
Killed in WWI.
The obvious paradox is that if the philosophy of self-sacrifice is entirely successful there will be no one left to die for the nation, and no nation left to die for. Further, to encourage the youngest and best to sacrifice themselves cuts of the chain of the very evolutionary development that has produced their nobility, such that there will be no such nobility perpetuated unto future generations. This philosophy is self-defeating simply because those most likely to survive and perpetuate their kind are precisely the ones least likely to follow it, or to continue it except as hypocritical cant.
The ultimate cinematic put-down of this philosophy comes in three films–one for WWI, one for WWII, and one for the Vietnam War: “All Quiet on the Western Front”, “The Americanization of Emily”, and “Full Metal Jacket”; in the last of those, soldiers reflect on what it means to be asked to “die for a word”. But it is more than a word: it is a belief system, a parasitic one at that, regardless of which “ism” is used to describe it — a kind of venomous memetic organism that perpetuates itself at the expense of its hosts, and if necessary of the whole world, like a virus that perpetuates itself until its last surviving host succumbs and it succumbs as well. peace.org
I find myself in agreement with Koenigsberg’s analysis. Based on my own research and theory-building, Hitler’s and Nazi ideologies are indeed the end product of what I now call ‘transcendentism’, which is a basic dimension in social organization. Any modern society uses this principle as one of the three founding principles of its organization (as opposed to anarchic, open-aggregated, non-social organization).
Transcendentism is premised on 1. the existence of a supra-empirical, abstract and permanent entity, usually of a collective nature, such as the corporation in Henry Sumner Maine’s definition, or God in Abrahamic religions, or the Nation in nationalistic ideologies; 2. the idea that the subject’s essence is linked to this entity in such a way as his/her inner identity is commanded by this supra-empirical entity acting as an agency that is both inside and outside the subject. In other words this abstract transcendent entity is part of the essence of the subject while being apart, separated from it.
This seems complicated but actually transcendentism is a philosophical, political and ideological expression of a basic, elementary psychological phenomenon, that of submission or obedience to a higher power. Being submitted as a child to one’s parents or any adult’s power and being forcibly constrained and terrorized by such power is a the root of obedience disguised later on as sacrifice for a higher cause, this cause being the supposed will of the transcendent entity posited, for instance in Abrahamic, Nazi or Nationalistic ideologies.
The important point is that transcendentism is not something that is specifically linked to extreme nationalism or fascistic ideology, but a basic ingredient of any social organization. Devotion to a corporation, or blind obedience to a leader, or fanatical love for a soccer team, are aspects of the same process. What passes as a civilized and commendable disposition, say, patriotism, or being part of a fan club, is nothing but a mark of transcendentism.
However, while looking at transcendentism and the evils it entailed in recent history, one must be reminded that in democracies, other forces are at play and counteract to a certain degree the outcome of pure transcendentism.
Hi Charles M! Didn’t expect to find you commenting here, and along // lines.
I too want to put in the strongest possible affirmation of the key concept “participation” (as used by Levy-Bruhl in France) as used by Owen Barfield in Saving the Appearances: Studies in Idolatry. It’s the opposite of “alienation.”
I think of participation as an immanentalist (rather than transcendentist) grounding process, being part of something larger than oneself — Nature, our Species-Being, one of Gaia’s or the Earthmother’s children, staying in the Open Mind, staying in touch with the Originating Mystery, a pre-totemic deep identification with the Lifeforce. Or with God, defined in these ways. As they say in Newark, NJ A.A. meetings — “Call: God is Good. Response: ALL the time!
There is nothing about this mode of identifying with a Deeper Power that can be called Nazi, SS, Evil, Sacrificial.
The markers of those who serve Negative Participation, the Dark Side, Moloch and Mammon, the Leader, the State, are always very, very clear. Uniforms. Obedience to Authority. Sacrifice and scapegoating. War worship. Flag worship. Patriarchy. Fatherland fetishism of all forms. Caste/rankings. Torture/sadism. The signs of Negative Participation are everywhere and totalizing or totalitarian.
The feelings of positive Participation are often invisible, inside individuals, liberating, non-violent, a turning it over or surrendering, and when public, or in the street, this participation is always joyous music-dance-songs of the oldest religious dromena, NEVER a marching off to war.
Heeeey Charlie, so that’s where immanentist soul-mates meet!!!!
You are right of course, transcendentism is just that: alienation. You don’t belong to yourself, but to the Fatherland, to Yaveh, to the King, to the State, whatever. This is the Ponzi scheme of human history, that which is exalting the cruel, sadistic, servile and immoral father of Isaac, that which promotes war, genocide, conquest, slavery.
Immanentism (immanentalism) is belonging to a greater whole while retaining one’s autonomy (ability to self-rule). I personally find this in nature, in the mountains, in sailing, when you meet other people, mountaineers and sailors, as equals, soul-mates, companions, friends, united and free at the same time, when your are humbled by nature but not humiliated by man. It is a human realm dominated by nature, quite the opposite of the natural realm dominated by humans, with the results that we know today. Music, as you know so well, and particularly jazz music, is such a realm of joyous cooperation and personal freedom.
I should have added: positive Participation and respect for other people’s autonomy. Then we get at the bottom of what immanentism means (as opposed to transcendentism with is the denial of other peoples’ autonomy and negative Participation= subservience).
Cannot help but quote this from Georges Brassens:
“Gloire à qui n’ayant pas
D’idéal sacro-saint
Se borne à ne pas trop
Emmerder ses voisins”