In Japan’s Holy War (2009), Walter Skya concludes that the goal of totalitarian movements everywhere is the “assimilation of the individual into a collective body." Japanese nationalism was “only one variety.”

According to Skya, the objective of Japanese totalitarianism was to “absorb the self into the Emperor.” Alternatively, one can say that the Emperor would be absorbed into the bodies of each and every individual. In the any case, the totalitarian fantasy was to annul the distinction between the  of the Emperor and the desires of individuals.

Rudolf Hess declared at mass rallies, “Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler,” while Hitler proclaimed to his youth: “You are flesh of my flesh, blood of my blood. You are all one, belonging to me.” The dream was that each German would unite with Hitler and each and every other German to constitute a single body politic.

“Obedience” results when the leader and his ideology have become internalized into the mind and body of each follower. The national fantasy has become so much a part of each individual--that the "follower" cannot resist “following orders.”

Kakehi Katsuhiko (1872-1961) was a key thinker in the development of Japanese nationalism. The armed forces, Skya obseres, occupied a special position in Kakehi’s thinking. The Imperial Rescript to the armed forces, “One Spirit, Same Body,” read in part:

Soldiers and sailors, we are your supreme Commander-in-Chief. Our relations with you will be the most intimate when we rely upon you as our limbs, and you look up to us as your head.

The idea (ideal) of absolute obedience grew out of this fantasy imagining soldiers and sailors as “limbs” of a body--with the leader as head of this body. In this fantasy, followers have no alternative but to follow orders. How can a limb of a body defy the head?

This psychic state of obedience differs from slavery. The soldier or sailor who embraces the cause of the Emperor does not feel abused or oppressed. The Emperor’s desires become the desires of the individual.

The ideal of totalitarianism is that there is no difference between one’s own desires and national imperatives. The individual disappears into the nation—becomes a cipher. He has so deeply internalized his nation's mandate and that of its leaders--that he does not object when asked to enter battle to become “obedient unto death.”

Hitler explained to his people, “You are nothing, your nation is everything.” One becomes “everything” by becoming nothing. One abandons the boundaries of one’s ego, identifying one’s ego with the entire nation. Absolute obedience (nothingness) is the vehicle toward achieving omnipotence (everythingness).

Bernd Wegner (1990) notes that the SS-man saw himself as an “integrated element of a social organism.” In the spirit of Hitler's ideology, the individual German was conceived as a cell of the body politic. The SS-man cannot act autonomously any more than a cell can act separately from the body of which it is part. “Obedience” reflects the fantasy that one is united with a body politic.

Wegner states that the individual in the eyes of the SS was only "a fragment of the body politic to which he owed allegiance.” His value—the justification for his existence—depended on the “advantage he furnished the national community.” Just as the Japanese soldier existed solely for the sake of the Emperor and Japan, so the SS-man existed solely for the sake of Hitler and Germany.

As a “fragment of the body politic,” the SS-man had no alternative to—could not resist—obeying the commands of the body of which he was part. Like the Japanese soldier, he was asked to abandon his subjective will to internalize the “will of the Fuehrer.”

What is the purpose of “obedience”—of abandoning one’s subjectivity in order to follow the orders of an Emperor or Fuehrer? To achieve a sense of omnipotence by imagining the nation as a single body politic united under a single will. Hitler said:

It was necessary to give the German people that great feeling of community: suddenly out of the weak will of sixty million individuals there springs a gigantic mighty compressed will of all. Now it is not I who face the destiny of Germany, but an army of millions is at my side. I am part of this army: as individuals we may perhaps be weak, but taken together, nothing can break us.

Nationalism seeks the absolute unity of millions of people—under a single will of a leader (an Emperor, or a Fuehrer). The will of the leader becomes coterminous with the “will of the people.” There is no separation between the nation, its leader and the people. The country is united into a single “gigantic, mighty compressed will.”