Often the enemy’s humanity is denied by referring to him as a “gook,” “Kraut,” “Nip,” or “raghead.” In Vietnam this process was assisted by the “body count” mentality, in which we referred to and thought of the enemy as numbers. One Vietnam vet told me that this permitted him to think that killing the NVA and VC was like “stepping on ants.” The greatest master of this in recent times may have been Adolf Hitler, with his myth of the Aryan master race: the Ubermensch, whose duty was to cleanse the world of the Untermensch. The adolescent soldier against whom such propaganda is directed is
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