A fascinating brief item from the Library of Social Science‘s site.
All German soldiers swore an oath to Adolf Hitler, vowing, “I shall at all times be prepared to give my life.” Similarly, those in the Schutzstaffel, or SS, vowed “absolute allegiance unto death.”
Hitler drew the following conclusion, as he and the National Socialist leadership were planning the Holocaust: “If — as leader of the German nation — I am allowed to send the best, finest people to die — why can’t I also require the enemy of the German people to be obedient unto death?”
And thus he turned Germany and much of Europe into a sacrificial pyre.