The Nazi Conscience

""Not every being with a human face is human."" According to Duke University historian Koonz, this statement by Nazi political theorist Carl Schmitt sums up the Nazi idea of""morality."" To speak of a Nazi conscience""is not an oxymoron,"" she states. The party had a philosophy and an ethic--an idea of right and wrong--however repugnant today's readers may find it. It was a relativist morality, valuing the well-being of the Volk over that of outsiders. Hitler, Koonz says, understood the German people's need for a sense of coherence in the wake of what many saw as the degeneracy of the Weimar Republic--and""he promised to rescue old-fashioned values of honor and dignity"" by offering a secular faith to replace lost religious certainties. Koonz explores the promotion of these beliefs in German culture and law, and how they led to the catastrophe of the Holocaust, adding much to our understanding of how a civilized society could reach such infamous levels of violence.