The paper examines the relationship between the human body and the ‘body politic’ through analysis of health metaphors and policies promoted by Hitler and officials of Nazi Germany. Koenigsberg shows how Hitler conceived of the German nation as a living organism. Rudolph Hess claimed that National Socialism was “nothing but applied biology.” The Fürher was viewed by many Germans as the “great doctor” of the nation.

Based on analysis of images and metaphors contained within the rhetoric of Hitler and other Nazi leaders, this paper articulates the central idea of National Socialism: that the German nation was an organism and its enemies pathogenic microorganisms that threatened to disintegrate the health of the national body.

The Jewish threat was constructed in these terms. Hitler saw Jews as alien elements that had entered the German body. Genocide, therefore—seeking  to physically eliminate all traces of Jewish existence—was a form of immunology: the battle to destroy microbes. Hitler believed he had discovered the cause of German suffering. He understood his mission as the recovery of the health of the German nation through the elimination of Jews.

Koenigsberg suggests that the Final Solution grew out of the Nazi idea of Germany as a body possessing an immune system—fighting microbes that acted to destroy this body’s health. This idea was expressed in Hitler’s speeches, but also in laws and health policies instituted by the Third Reich--such as the euthanasia of “life unworthy of living.” The idea of the German nation as a body possessing an immune system encompassed the totality of social life in Germany—the genocide of the Jews being its most radical manifestation.

At the core of Nazi ideology and  practice was the idea of Germany as a real body functioning according to biological laws. Doctors and party members were asked to ferret out people judged to be unhealthy, or unwilling to contribute to national life. Those who could not contribute to the life of the German nation were conceived as defective cells within the national organism that had to be removed or eliminated so the organism could function properly.

Nazi ideology was based upon this analogy between a human body invaded by a “cancer” and a nation “afflicted with subpopulations whose inborn characteristics cause them to become social liabilities”. Just as in cancer the best treatment is to eradicate the parasitic growth as quickly as possible, the health of a nation demanded drastic biological measures against afflicted subpopulations: genocide.