We now understand the ideological proposition—the logic—that led to Nazi mass murder: If the state is willing to sacrifice the lives of its soldiers, why should so many resources be expended to keeping mental patients alive? If the nation is willing to kill its most valuable possession—those who make the greatest contribution to the state—why can’t it also kill human beings who have no value—make no contribution to the state?

Still, the question remains: Why are nation-states willing to sacrifice the lives of soldiers?” This is “the totem secret” (Marvin): the question Hitler refused to ask, that Germans refused to ask (after the First World War)—and that we refuse to ask to this present day.

Why do we believe that Nations Have the Right to Kill (Koenigsberg, 2009)? Academics boldly “deconstruct” nearly everything. However, they are hesitant to go where men and women fear to tread: to question the nature of our belief in the value of sacrificial death.

Hitler refused to question the death of his own comrades: “After all, were they not dying for Germany?” Yet—as a soldier who fought in the First World War—Hitler was deeply disturbed by what he had seen and experienced. But instead of abandoning the idea of sacrificial death (for a nation), he embraced this ideology more fervently and deeply than anyone ever had.

And in a reductio ad absurdum, he insisted: “Well, if young German men (soldiers) can die for the country, why not mental patients, why not Jews (enemies of the German people)—and why not civilians as well.”

Hitler fetishized the idea of “dying for the country,” extended this idea, brought it to a bizarre conclusion.

If the state is willing to sacrifice the lives of its soldiers, why are resources expended to keep mental patients alive? If the state is willing to kill its own soldiers, why can’t it kill human beings who are “worthless?” Beginning with this syllogism, we understand the origins of mass-murder in Germany: why the Nazis believed that the state had the “right” to kill. However, the question remains: WHY DOES THE STATE HAVE THE RIGHT TO KILL ITS OWN SOLDIERS? Genocide and the Geographical Imagination: Life and Death in Germany, China, and Cambodia (James A. Tyner) For ordering information, please click here. James A. Tyner is professor in the Department of Geography at Kent State University.

Tyner cites the famous passage from the 1920 book by Alfred Hoche and Karl Binding, Allowing the Destruction of Life Unworthy of Life, the foundational text justifying, authorizing, and generating state murder:

If one thinks of a battlefield covered with thousands of dead youth and contrasts this with our institutions for the feebleminded with their solicitude for the living patients—then one would be deeply shocked by the glaring disjunction between the sacrifice of the most valuable possession of humanity on the one side, and on the other the greatest care of beings who are not only worthless but even manifest negative value.

The message is clear: If the state is willing to sacrifice the lives of its soldiers, why should so many resources be expended to keep mental patients alive? If the state is willing to kill its own soldiers (its most valuable possession), why can’t it also kill human beings who are “worthless?”

Beginning with this syllogism, we can understand the origins of mass-murder in Germany: why Hitler and the Nazis believed that the state gave them the “right” to kill.

However, the question remains: