FROM KOENIGSBERG'S NOTEBOOK: Germany was ill—suffering—the nation was conceived as if an actual organism—suffering from a deadly disease. Hitler sought to identify the cause of Germany’s disease. Jews were identified as the cause. Everything Hitler did revolved around destroying Germany’s illness.

Germany was conceived as if a single organism consisting of the German people as cells of the organism. Every human being (cell) had to work together in the name of supporting or sustaining their organism: The “life of the nation” had priority over everything else.

The Jews constituted malignant cells within the German organism—viruses or bacteria who, so to speak, went their own way or did their own thing—unconcerned with the overall health or well-being of the organism.

So Jews had to be removed from the Body Politic. Genocide was conceived as a form of immunology: removing the alien or not-self cells from within the nation, so that the organism could survive.

Just as a cell cannot exist apart from the organism of which it is a part, so Hitler believed that a human being could not exist separately from the organism of which it was a part. A cell separated from the body would cease to exist if not bound to the organism. Human beings as cells constituted the national organism.

When Hitler declares to his people, “You are nothing, your nation is everything,” he is saying, essentially, that the human being as cell has no significance apart from the national organism. Just as the fundamental purpose of a cell is to sustain the existence of the body of which it is a part, so Hitler believed that the only purpose of a human being was to support and sustain the life of the national organism.

Hitler believed that Germany functioned according to the law of the immune system: that biological system that works automatically within living organisms to identify not-self cells, and to remove or eliminate these cells. Living organisms function according to a biological system that acts to reject or destroy cells as identified alien or non-self.

Nazi ideology grew out of the fantasy of the nation as a body with an immune system. Nazism revolved around the struggle (Mein Kampf) to maintain the life of the German organism in the face of alien cells that had invaded their organism—and threatened to destroy it. In the face of this biological imperative to maintain the life of Germany (the “substance” of the German people), any action undertaken became justifiable. “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany, we have performed the greatest deed in the world.”

Genocide proceeded based on the logic of this organismic fantasy. Hitler did not “invent” the metaphors that he used “in order to” dehumanize and kill Jews. These metaphors arose “naturally” based on the idea or fantasy that possessed Hitler.

Given that Germany was a body and that the Jews were bacteria or viruses or parasites within this body, he could act in no other way—as a responsible politician—to act to remove the alien cells that threatened the life of his beloved fantasy. Hitler’s actions followed based on the logic of a fantasy that was projected into Nazi ideology. The biological fantasy defined Nazi ideology. The Nazi movement represented the acting out of a fantasy contained within Nazi ideology.

Rudolf Hess stated that National Socialism was nothing but “applied biology.” This was the thrilling message of Nazism: that National Socialism was “in accord with the biology of man”—that it grew out of—was based upon—biological laws. The essential law that governed Nazism was the law of the immune system: the idea that each and every organism had naturally acted to destroy alien cells. The biological law transformed into the idea that Germans had the right and responsibility to act to remove alien or destructive cells that existed within the national organism. 

The Nazi was responsible for protecting and maintaining the nation—destroying its enemies, much as any devoted nationalist strives to protect one’s country from its enemies. What’s more, insofar as the Nazi deeply identified with the German nation (Rudolf Hess often introduced Hitler with the phrase, “Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler”), the Jewish bacteria or virus—the disease within the body politic—was experienced as if being within the body of the Nazi.

Insofar as Hitler identified with the German nation, the Jewish disease was experienced by him as if lodged within his own body. Hitler’s struggle (Mein Kampf) was the struggle to remove a disease from within his own body. What was the nature and meaning of this disease that so profoundly threatened the life of the nation?

Everything that occurred in Nazi Germany grew out of this fantasy of the nation as a body with a disease; the tendency to equate the nation with a living organism. Konrad Lorenzo (the ethologist who later was to win a Nobel Prize) stated in a German psychology journal that there was a close analogy between a nation “afflicted with sub-populations whose inborn defects cause them to become social liabilities” and a “human body invaded by a cancer.” In short, defective human beings within a nation were compared with defective (cancerous) cells within the human body.

Lorenzo goes on to say that just as in cancer the best treatment is to “eradicate the parasitic growth as quickly as possible,” so the “eugenic defense against affected sub-populations” required “equally drastic measures.” The national defense against sub-populations afflicted with inborn defects required “drastic measures”—in order to rescue the body politic. Genocide arose out of a biological fantasy whose purpose was to destroy sub-populations inflicted with the defects—that were likened to a cancer or parasitic growth inflicting a human body.

Hitler conceived of himself as the “Robert Koch of Germany:” he was acting out the fantasy of the nation as a body with a disease, with him (Hitler) as the Doctor who had discovered the cause of Germany’s disease and would “immunize” her against further infection.

The connection between immune fantasy and paranoia: Paranoia is a permutation of immunology: it’s based on fear of homosexual penetration (“protecting the rear,” as Hitler put it): This is the basis for politics (paranoid anxiety surrounding fear that the body politic will be penetrated). World Trade Center = phallic penetration and destruction of the American phallus, generating phallic revenge.

Hitler’s odyssey was based on FAITH IN THE NATION (as an immortal object), and faith in him as the representative of the nation: “We carry out Hitler’s orders, and thus we prove our faith in him.” Obedience unto death was a declaration of faith. Faith in the omnipotent organism—having precedence over the self: Like Lacan’s idea of the “symbolic order:” the “church of Lacan:” faith in the immortality of the symbolic order.

The destructive forces (of disintegration) = that which threatened to destroy one’s tie to the object (and belief in its immortality). The Jew symbolized destruction (negation) of faith in the immortality of Germany. Zerzetzung = destruction of “civilization” (= the fantasy of immortality). The healthy (immortal) German body would be destroyed by Jewish bacteria (the disease of death).

Binding the cells together to create a single body acting in accordance with a single will: this was Hitler’s fantasy of immortality. “Our people have become one and this unity will never break into pieces.” Hitler imagined the German people to be a single, unified body—an unbreakable body: he projected his own body into the body politic, and struggled to prevent fragmentation (disintegration) through identifying himself with the “great mass of people.”

Jost: The “state’s right to kill” (he advocated direct medical killing). Jost pointed out that the state already exercised these “rights” in war, where “thousands of individuals are sacrificed for the good of the state.” The state must own death—kill—Jost asserted, in order to “keep the social organism alive and healthy.” The state is experienced as an organism that consumes bodies in order to stay alive: “feed the monster” (the Aztecs).

The parasite is the immortal object, feeding on the self: Germany. The Jew is the negative of the immortal object. Lack of belief causes disintegration (of the tie to the object). Everything revolves around disillusionment with the idea of the immortality (eternal union) with one’s nation: Steve joins mother in the coffin.