I.

THE HYPOTHESIS
The Nazi movement grew out of an ideology embraced and shared by millions of people. The
actions of the Nazis grew out of their ideology: they acted out propositions or theorems
contained within it. In this paper, I delineate the underlying structure of Nazi ideology; a
coherent fantasy that shaped the ideology and was the source of the energy invested in it.
I hypothesize that an ideology evokes enthusiasmelicits an emotional responseto the extent
that it articulates a fantasy that is shared by members of a population. Hitler was passionate
about his own ideas. When he spoke, he conveyed his passion and elicited comparable passion
within others. Hitler's ideas excited the German people. What he said struck a responsive chord
in the minds and hearts of millions of other Germans. It was an ideology that united the German
people and gave rise to Nazi culture.
Hitler and Nazism often are portrayed as if an aberration; outside the norms of civilization. I
have found, on the contrary, that Hitler's ideas were fully within the mainstream of Western
political culture. National Socialism was a subset of the ideology of nationalism. One may
characterize Hitler as a radical conformist. Hitler embraced and promoted certain ordinary ideas
fundamental propositions contained within the ideology of nationalismand carried them to
an extreme, bizarre conclusion.
II. NAZISM AND THE IDEOLOGY OF NATIONALISM
According to the ideology of nationalism, the central entity or unit governing political and
cultural life is the nation. Each individual "belongs to" a particular nation and attains identity by
virtue of his or her relationship to the nation and its "national life." Nationalism assumes that
people identify with and become deeply attached to nations; that people will experience
emotions toward their own nationoften very intense ones; that they will "love" their nation
(and sometimes "hate" it). It also is assumed within the ideology of nationalism that people will
have opinions about and emotional responses toward other nations. It is expected that one's
emotional response toward other nations will be less positive than the response toward one's own
nation and usually less intense (except in cases where the other nation is defined as the "enemy"
of one's nation).
Nations are entities that seek to be "strong," or powerful. One way a nation manifests strength is
by virtue of its capacity to "defend itself" against other nations. Nationalism assumes that nations
have "enemies" that are bent upon doing harm to one's nation. The assumption that one's nation
possesses enemies generates the development of social institutions and vast expenditures allotted
in the name of "national defense."
Totalitarian ideologies such as Nazism represent extreme forms of nationalism. Hitler preached,
"Your life is bound up with the life of your whole people; the nation is not merely the root of
your strength, it is the root of your very life." He asked his people to acknowledge their profound
dependence upon the nation. He declared, "Our Nation is not just an idea in which you have no
part; you yourself support the nation; to it you belong; you cannot separate yourself from it."
Hitler insisted that people identify themselves entirely with the nation; that it was not possible to
exist in a condition of separation from one's nation.
Hitler proclaimed:
Our future is Germany. Our today is Germany. And our past is Germany. Let us take a vow this
evening, at every hour, in each day, to think of Germany, of the nation, of our German people.
You cannot be unfaithful to something that has given sense and meaning to your whole existence.

He declared that Deutschland uber Alles (Germany above all) is a profession of faith which "fills
millions with a great strength, with that faith which is mightier than any earthly might." Nazism
was based on the belief that one should be deeply devoted, loyal and faithful to one's nation.
Hitler presented himself as a model of faith and devotion. His oratory revolved around
persuading others to share his faith and devotion; to love Germany as deeply as he did.
Hitler's promise was that Germans would become endowed with "great strength" by virtue of
devotion to and faith in Germany. On the other hand, Hitler explained to his people: "You are
nothing, your nation is everything." In other words, the strength that the individual could expect
to obtain by virtue of identification with Germany required an extreme form of self-negation. In
order to embrace and partake of the omnipotence of the nationto internalize its strengthone
had to become "nothing." Hitler's Nazism was an orgy of nationalistic self-glorification and
simultaneously an orgy of self-abnegation. What was glorified was the nation or collective. What
was abnegated was the actual person, who traded in his or her individuality for the sake of being
"at one" with the omnipotent nation.
Rudolf Hess often introduced Hitler at mass-rallies declaring, "Hitler is Germany, just as
Germany is Hitler." Hitler reveled in his identification with Germany. Indeed, at the core of
Nazism was this mystical sense of "oneness" between self and nation. From this perspective,
Nazism did not differ from ordinary nationalism that posits that the life of the individual and
national life are intimately bound. What Hitler did was to carry through the idea of
"identification with one's nation" to an extreme conclusion. Nazism revealed the heart of
darkness or monumental destructiveness contained within the idea of "love of country."
III. HITLER'S IDEOLOGY
Hitler's ideology grew out of his fantasy of the nation as an actual organism or body (politic).
"Our movement alone," Hitler declared, "was capable of creating a national organism." In place
of the State, Hitler said, must be set "the living organismthe people." Hitler conceived of
Germany as a body politic consisting of German people as its cells. It followed that the purpose
of politics was to preserve the body politic; to "maintain the substance of the people in bodily
and mental health, in good order and purity." According to Hitler, the supreme test of every
politic institution was: "Does it serve to preserve the people or not."
Germany, howeveraccording to Hitlerhad a problem. The otherwise healthy body politic
was being assailed or assaulted by forces that threatened to destroy it; to bring about the demise
of the nation. National Socialism came into being as a response to the desire of Hitler and others
to rescue or "save" the nation; to prevent it from dying. Hitler proclaimed that he was determined
to "prevent our Germany from suffering, as Another did, the death upon the cross."
Throughout his political career, Hitler was possessed and tormented by58 his conviction that an
unprecedented, cosmic force was working toward the destruction, not only of Germany, but of
Western civilization. Hitler declared that it was only rarely that the life of peoples "suffers from
such convulsions that the deepest foundations of the edifice of social order are shaken" and
threatened with destruction. "Who will refuse to see or even deny," Hitler said, that "today we
find ourselves in the midst of a struggle that is not concerned merely with the problems of
frontiers between peoples or States but rather with the question of the maintenance or
annihilation of the whole inherited human order of society and its civilizations?"
The phrase that appears most frequently in Hitler's speeches to describe this threat to Germany
and Western civilization is translated as "force of disintegration." The German word "zersetzung"
is a term from chemistry meaning "decomposition;" that which breaks things down into their

component parts. Hitler identified Jews as "disintegrators of people" working to bring about the
"political disintegration of the body of a people." Hitler believed that the Jewish force of
disintegration within the body politic was working to cause the nation to fragment; break into
pieces.
Given the danger that Germany would fall to pieces, one of Hitler's fundamental political
strategies was to work to unite or unify the German people; to bind them together into a single,
indestructible body. To solve the problems of Germany, Hitler said, it was essential to bring the
people together so that "millions of individuals could be fused into a unity." Hitler would act to
bring about the "inner welding together of the body of our people." He insisted that men throw
themselves into the "great melting pot, the nation" so that they could be "welded one to another."
We've observed that Hitler conceived of Germany as a gigantic "national organism" consisting of
people as cells of this body. Hitler's efforts to unify or unite the German people, therefore,
reflected his desire tofuse together the cells of the German nation into a cohesive body (politic).
National Socialism grew out of Hitler's belief that Germany was disintegrating. His struggle
(Mein Kampf) reflected his desire to create a German body politic that was so cohesiveso
powerfulthat it would not succumb to this internal force that threatened to cause it to
disintegrate.
Hitler's ideology, then, revolved around his conception of a unified German body politic, on the
one hand, and a Jewish force of destruction on the other hand that was acting to cause Germany
to fall apart. Hitler called the Jew the "demon of the disintegration of peoples," symbol of the
"unceasing destruction of their life." The project of National Socialism, therefore, was
"glorification of the national creative will over against the conception of international
disintegration."
As National Socialism consolidated its power, Hitler believed he had achieved his goal of
welding the German people into a single, omnipotent body politic. Affirming his determination
to protect his accomplishment, Hitler declared, "Our people have become one and this unity in
Germany will never break into pieces." He insisted that his Movement would leave behind a
German body politic "completely renewed internally, intolerant of anyone who sins against the
nation and its interests, intolerant and pitiless against anyone who shall attempt once more to
destroy or disintegrate this body politic."
If the first most frequently used phrase by Hitler to describe the threat to Germany was that of a
"force of disintegration," the second was that of a "disease within the body politic" whose
continued presence within the nation could lead to its death. The balance of this paper will focus
on the belief of Hitler and other Nazis that Germany was suffering from a potentially fatal
disease whose source was "Jewish bacteria."
Hitler approached politics as if a physician, observing that "Every distress has some root or
other." In order to cure the nation's disease, Hitler said, it was not sufficient to behave like
conventional politicians who merely "doctored around on the circumference of the distress" and
only occasionally tried to "lance the cancerous ulcer." Rather, Hitler believed, in order to cure
Germany's disease, it was necessary to "penetrate to the seat of the inflammationto the cause."
It was relatively unimportant, Hitler said, whether this irritating cause was discovered or
removed "today or tomorrow." The essential thing to realize was that unless the cause was
removed "no cure is possible."
IV. NAZI IDEOLOGY

My initial research on Nazi ideology focused on Hitler's rhetoric. I subsequently turned to

analysis of the writings of other Nazi leaders in order to develop a general theory of the
relationship between ideology and fantasy. I had uncovered a coherent fantasy at the root of
Hitler's ideology. Would it be possible to discern a similar fantasy contained within the rhetoric
of other Nazi ideologues?
Robert J. Lifton's book, The Nazi Doctors (1986) provides evidence that at least for some Nazis,
the fantasy that drove Hitler's thinking drove the thinking of other Nazis as well. Lifton spent
several years interviewing twenty-nine men who had been significantly involved at high levels
with Nazi medicine. Lifton's reconstruction of the deep-structure of Nazi ideology presented in
his book is based upon these interviews, combined with an extensive analysis of written
accounts, documents, speeches, diaries, and letters.
The central fantasy uncovered by Lifton was that of the German nation as an organism that could
succumb to an illness. Lifton cites Dr. Johann S. who spoke about being "doctor to the
Volkskorper ("national body" or "people's" body)." National Socialism, Dr. Johann S. said, is a
movement rather than a party, constantly growing and changing according to the "health"
requirements of the people's body. "Just as a body may succumb to illness," the doctor declared,
so "the Volkskorper could do the same."
When Lifton asked another doctor, Fritz Klein, how he could reconcile the concentration camps
with his Hippocratic Oath to save lives, he replied "Of course I am a doctor and I want to
preserve life. And out of respect for human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a
diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind." Lifton mentioned
this phrase "gangrenous appendix" to another Nazi, Dr. B., who quickly answered that his overall
feeling and that of the other Nazi doctors was that "Whether you want to call it an appendix or
not, it must be extirpated (ausgerottet, meaning also "exterminated," "destroyed," "eradicated").
A number of the Nazi doctors interviewed by Lifton expressed a fantasy, then, that closely
resembles the fantasy that I uncovered as the core Hitler's ideology. In this Nazi fantasy, the
nation is conceived as if a gigantic organism. Jews in this fantasy are imagined to be diseased
entities within this organism whose presence might cause the body politic to die. According to
this Nazi fantasy, preventing the death of the German organism required the "removal" of these
diseased entities.
Let me provide additional examples of Nazi rhetoric that reveals this fantasy of (to use Lifton's
phrase) "killing as a therapeutic imperative"). Dr. Werner Best, Heydrich's deputy in the Secret
Police Office, stated that the National Socialist State was an institution that "carefully supervises
the political health of the German body politic." The Nazi state, Best said, was quick to
recognize all symptoms of disease and germs of destruction and to "remove them by every
suitable means."
In one of his Table Talks in 1942, Hitler referred to the transport of Jews to the eastern regions by
asking what possible objection could be raised when in the interest of the state an "obvious
canker of the people has to be eliminated." In 1943 when the policy of the gas chambers was
operative, Hitler said to the Hungarian Regent Horthy that Jews should be treated like "tubercles
which can infect a healthy body." Nobody could call this cruelty, he said, considering the
necessity of "killing innocent creatures of nature like hares and roes to prevent them from
causing damage."
Goebbels put it this way: "Our task here is surgical; drastic incisions, or some day Europe will
perish of the Jewish disease." Hans Frank, General Governor of Poland during the Nazi
occupation, called Jews "a lower species of life, a kind of vermin, which upon contact infected

the German people with deadly diseases." When the Jews in the area he ruled had been killed, he
declared that, "Now a sick Europe will become healthy again." Finally, on February 22, 1942,
Hitler made the following astonishing statement: "The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the
greatest revolutions that have taken place in the world. The battle we are engaged in is of the
same sort as the battle waged during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch."
Nazi ideology, it would appear, grew out of a systematic fantasy projected into reality. This
fantasy revolved around the idea of Germany as an actual body (politic) containing deadly
disease. The Final Solution and death camps represented a response to this fantasy; a form of
acting out. The death campsa massive social institutionrepresents an excellent case study in
the "social construction of reality." The nature and shape of the reality constructed by the Nazis
derived from the fantasy contained within their ideology.
Hitler in Mein Kampf plaintively asks, "Could anyone believe that Germany alone was not
subject to the same laws as all other human organisms?" In their influential book that laid the
groundwork for what was to follow--The Permission to Destroy Life Unworthy of Life (1920)
German professors Karl Binding and Alfred Hoche advocated euthanasia or state killing. They
described the state as an "organism with its own laws and rights, much like one self-contained
human organism" which "in the interest of the welfare of the wholeas we doctors know
abandons and rejects parts or particles that have become worthless or dangerous."
What was this organismic "law" to which these men alluded? I hypothesize that they were
referring to the "law of the immune system," that bio-chemically based system operative within
each organism that acts automatically to "reject" entities that enter the body and are identified as
foreign or "not self." The Final Solution represented the acting out of an immunological fantasy.
According to this Nazi fantasy, genocide represented the "automatic" response of the German
body politic to a "law of nature;" the national organism reacting to reject or destroy those alien
cells (e. g., Jewish bacteria) that had entered its bloodstream.
The Final Solution and death camps, then, may be understood as a response to the fantasy that
Jews constituted bacteria or viruses that needed to be removed from the German body politic if
the nation was to survive. One Nazi doctor stated that National Socialism was "nothing but
applied biology." Lifton suggests that this image of Nazism was not just one doctor's perception,
but was the "vision put forward by the movement." The unifying principle of the biomedical
ideology, Lifton concludes, was "that of a deadly racial disease, the sickness of the Aryan race:
the cure, the killing of all Jews."
V. THE DREAM OF NAZISM AS THE DREAM OF NATIONALISM
The National Socialistic movement was based upon an ideology that was a subset of the ideology
of nationalism. Nazism represented a frenzy of nationalistic hysteria. Jane Roberts states that
Hitler brought to flower all of the "most morbid nationalistic fantasies" that had been growing
for centuries. The grandiose celebration of a nation's "inalienable right to seek domination," she
says, focused finally in Hitler's Germany. Nazism acted out the deepest, darkest dreams
contained within the ideology of nationalism.
Adolf Jost, a theorist of scientific racism who had issued an early call for direct medical killing
in his book, The Right to Death (1895) argued that "control over the death of the individual must
ultimately belong to the social organism, the state." Jost was pointing to the "state's right to kill."
Jost pointed out that the state already exercised those "rights" in war, where thousands of

individuals are sacrificed for the good of the State. The state must own deathmust killJost
asserted, in order to "keep the social organism alive and healthy."
Jost draws our attention to a fundamental theme at the heart of nationalism, namely the human
tendency to reify and idealize nation-states; to relate to nations as if real entities that exist
separate and apart from the individuals who constitute them. Such omnipotent nation-states or
social organisms requirelike the gods of the Aztecs"sacrifices" if they are to be kept alive.
This fantasy of the nation as an entity existing above and beyond actual individuals constitutes
the fundamental political ideology of our time.
VI. CONCLUSION
The data I've presented suggests that the Nazis projected a fantasy into their ideologyallowing
us to perceive the deep structure of their ideology. Nazism revolved around the fantasy of
Germany as an actual body (politic); a concrete "substance of flesh and blood." Jews were
conceived as bacteria or viruses, source of a disease within the body politic. The Final Solution
was undertaken in order to eliminate pathogenic microorganisms from within the body politic,
thus removing the source of Germany's disease and enabling the nation to survive.
Identification of recurring metaphors and images reveals bodily fantasies as the source of Nazi
ideology. This Nazi fantasy about the body (politic) was always present, part of the warp and
woof of their ideology. What I have attempted to do in this paper is to allow us to perceive this
fantasy. Having articulated the fantasy that was the source of Nazism, the next step will be to
interpret it; to uncover its meaning; the source of the fantasy's appeal and power.