NAZISM

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 ideasfundamental 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 nation
often 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 by 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
to fuse 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 followThe 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 knowabandons 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.