Richard Koenigsberg speaking at Boston College
His talk, "Hitler as the Robert Koch of Germany," will show how bacteriological theories generated the Holocaust
(SCROLL DOWN FOR THE PROLEGOMENON  TO HIS TALK)

Conference on "Hitler's Mein Kampf: Prelude to the Holocaust," April 25-26, 2019
 
Attend at no charge by sending an email now to Professor John J. Michalczyk at michalcj@bc.edu with the message, "I would like to attend the Conference." Space is limited: please register now.

Some of the world’s foremost scholars on Hitler, Nazism and the Holocaust will speak at this groundbreaking event, including Michael Bryan, Karla Schoenbeck, Wolfgang Hauck, Magnus Brechtken, Othmar Plockinger, David Crowe, Melania Murphy, Martin Menke, James Bernauer, Nathan Stoltzfus, Ralf Gawlick, Paul Bookbinder, and Tetyana Kloubert.
Hitler, July 10, 1941: "I feel I am like Robert Koch in politics. He discovered the bacillus and thereby ushered medical science onto new paths. I discovered the Jew as the bacillus and fermenting agent of all social decomposition."

Hitler, February 22, 1942: "The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that has taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged today is of the same sort as the battle waged by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus! We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew."

March 24, 1882: Robert Koch announced the Discovery of the Tubercle Bacillus—the cause of tuberculosis—to the Berlin Physiological Society.
Robert Koch presented his discovery of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis on March 24, 1882, leading to widespread adulation of Koch—and the idea of "bacteriology"— whose basic message was that each disease is caused by a specific pathogen. If one could identify and isolate the pathogenic organism and destroy it—the disease could be cured.

Writing on the history of German medicine, Paul Weindling (1993) describes how bacteriologists became aligned with the state—through the use of military analogies. Koch described how "alien parasites" entered the body.

Laboratory researchers were compared to soldiers: "Warrior against disease."There was widespread adulation of Koch. Thousands of handkerchiefs on which his face was embroidered were sold. Just as the bacterium causing tuberculosis had been isolated, so it was hoped that the germs of mental illness, criminality and feeble-mindedness could also be located.

Hitler's ideology built upon the ideas developed by Koch and German bacteriologists. In a fantastic move, he projected this theory into the "body politic." He claimed that Germany was a real body (politic) containing pathogenic organisms.

The Holocaust was generated based on Hitler's fantasy that Jews were bacteria or viruses within the German body, source of her disease. In Mein Kampf he stated that the only way to cure diseased conditions is to "disclose their cause," declaring that it was necessary to remove the "Jewish bacteria infecting the life of peoples."

Hitler presented himself as the politician who could cure the disease within the body politic by making clear the "causes of the disease." Just as Robert Koch had discovered the bacillus that caused tuberculosis, so Hitler imagined he had discovered the Jewish bacillus—cause of Germany's disease. Thus did a biological fantasy--projected into the world--generate the Holocaust.