How astonishing to realize that an entire group of people were treated as if a virus. On February 22, 1942 Hitler declared:

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.

Historical actions are not based on the effort to achieve "real" objectives. History grows out of psychotic fantasies projected into reality. When a psychotic fantasy is shared by members of a populace, we call it a "discourse" or "social movement."

March 24, 1882: Robert Koch announced the Discovery of the Tubercle Bacillus—the cause of tuberculosis—to the Berlin Physiological Society. Hitler's thinking about Jews grew out of Koch's disease theory.

WARRIORS AGAINST DISEASE

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.