Why do the best men lose their lives, while the worst survive?
Richard A. Koenigsberg
“Why do the best human beings lose their lives (soldiers who die in battle), whereas the worst human beings survive?” This question—that tormented Hitler—was precisely the same question posed by Hoche and Binding in their treatise on euthanasia.

Neither Hitler nor Hoche and Binding were willing to engage the question: “Why does the state authorize the deaths of its best human beings?” Rather, they proposed: “If the state authorizes the killing of its best human beings, why should the state spare the lives of its worst human beings?” This syllogism launched mass murder.

We’ve observed that in their treatise, Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life (1920), Hoche and Binding reflect on a “battlefield covered with thousands of dead youth,” and lament the disparity between the profligate sacrifice of the “finest flower of humanity,” on the one hand, and the compassionate treatment by the state of mental patients, on the other.

The question posed by the authors is, essentially: “Why does the state treat soldiers so poorly—and mental patients so well?” Or: “Why does the state promiscuously sacrifice the lives of young men, yet takes great pains to maintain the lives of mental patients?” Or: “Why does the state so readily take the lives of its best, most valuable citizens, yet work so diligently to preserve the lives of its worst—most useless—citizens?”

The Nazi project of mass murder began with the killing of defective children and mental patients. This project was based upon the logic contained within Hoche and Binding’s treatise: “If the state can kill its most valuable citizens (who sacrifice their lives for their country), why can’t it sacrifice the lives of its least valuable citizens (also, presumably for the ‘good of the country,’ releasing society from the burden of maintaining ‘useless lives’)?”

This question of why soldiers die in war—and other people do not—lay at the heart of Hitler’s thinking as well. This related to a broader issue: Why do the best citizens of a nation die, while the worst survive?

In Mein Kampf (1924), Hitler discusses Germans who fought in the First World War. Who participated?

In hundreds of thousands of cases it was always a matter of volunteers to the front, volunteers for patriot and duty, volunteer dispatch carriers, and so on, and so on. During four-and-a-half years, and on thousands of occasions, there was always the call for volunteers and again for volunteers. And the result was always the same. Men filled with an ardent love for their country, urged on by their own courageous spirit or by a lofty sense of their duty—it was always such men who answered the call for volunteers.

Whole armies were composed of these volunteers who, without proper training, were thrown “as defenseless cannon-fodder to the enemy.” The 400,000 who thus fell or were permanently maimed on the battlefields of Flanders “could not be replaced anymore.”

It was always the good Germans who died in battle, Hitler believed, the best, most patriotic men. As a result, “that kind of human material steadily grew scarcer and scarcer.” Those who did not fall were “maimed in the fight or gradually had to join the ranks of the crippled.”

On the other hand, according to Hitler, some Germans refused to fight for Germany in the First World War—managed to avoid fighting and dying. Hitler believed that Germany was filled with these shirkers who did everything in their power to stay away from combat. This idea—that some Germans refused to fight in the First World War—was the fundamental premise, the undergirding, of Hitler’s ideology: the source of everything that followed.

Hitler explained that while for four-and-a-half years, the “best human material was being thinned to an exceptional degree on the battlefield,” at the same time, “Our worst people wonderfully succeeded in saving themselves.” For each hero who had made the “supreme sacrifice,” there was a shirker who “cunningly dodged death.”

One extreme of the population, the “best elements” had given a “typical example of its heroism and sacrificed itself almost to a man.” Whereas the other extreme, the “worst elements of the population” had “preserved itself almost intact”—by taking advantage of “absurd laws,” and because the authorities “failed to enforce certain articles of the military code.”

Why had some men died in the First World War, while others had not? Why had the best men forfeited their lives, while the worst men continued to live? Why had patriotic men died, whereas slackers—the unpatriotic—had preserved their lives? Hitler was tormented by these questions.

With the death of good German men, Hitler said, the scale on one side—already “too lightly weighed at that end of the social structure which represents our best quality,” now “moved rapidly upward.” Whereas the scale became “heavier on the other end” with those “vulgar elements of infamy and cowardice.” In short, as a result of differential death rates, there was an increase in Germany of the “worst extremes of the population.”

Why do the best human beings (soldiers) die, while the worst human beings survive? This question posed by Hitler was precisely the same question Hoche and Binding asked in their treatise on euthanasia.

Neither Hitler nor Hoche and Binding were willing to seek an answer to the question: “Why does the state authorize the deaths of its best human beings?” Rather, they put forth the proposition: “If the state authorizes the killing of its best human beings, why should the state be willing to spare the lives of its worst human beings?” This syllogism launched mass murder.

Richard A. Koenigsberg: rak@libraryofsocialscience.com