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.”