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To understand Hitler, Nazi Germany and the Final Solution, one has to enter into a strange world--as an anthropologist. Hitler created a world. To understand what occurred in Nazi Germany, one has to enter into this world. Hitler world was created based on how he projected his fantasies into his ideology. Hitler was a systematic thinker. Nazi violence and the atrocities they performed--was not "mindless aggression." Nothing whatsoever to do with "biology." Hitler put together a coherent body of thought. His ideas were not "rational," but they held together as a system. Mass-murder grew out this coherent body of thought, put forth by Hitler and embraced by many other Germans. One may speak of the "logic of the Holocaust." Having re-created Hitler's world view--the "propositions" he put forth-- it is not difficult to understand what followed. At the core of Hitler's thinking--the source of everything--was his conception of German as an organism--a real body politic. In a previous Newsletter, I presented Table 1 of Hitler’s Ideology, “The Country is a Living Organism.” Hitler stated that Nazism alone was capable of creating a “national organism;” that the German nation was a “substance of flesh and blood;” and that economics is a process—one of the “functions of that body which is the people.” He noted that the German people had become a “body corporate pulsing through and through with a vital inner life.” The term "body politic" has appeared throughout Western history. Hitler took this term or idea more seriously than anyone had ever taken it. For Hitler and the Nazis, this phrase or word was not a "mere metaphor." He conceived of Germany as if it was an actual body. And acted upon this idea. Hitler equated his own body with the German body politic. He attempted to persuade every German to take this Ger,am body into themselves, as he had; to become the German body politic. The Holocaust--as well as war against the Soviet Union--grew out of the fantasy that German was suffering from a disease. This disease was within the German body that was caused by the Jew. In concrete terms, Jews were the cause of the disease within the body politic (within Germany and every other body politic in the world)--which had to be removed or destroyed if the nation was to survive. Directly below, I’ve presented a Table featured in Hitler’s Ideology. Table 6 presents 43 statements summarized with the title, “The National Body is Diseased.” In these statements—39% from Mein Kampf and 61% from his speeches—Hitler states that the German nation is suffering from:
Hitler stated that “forces of decay” in terrifying numbers were “brushing up and down the body politic.” As a result of her disease, Germany “did not grow inwardly healthier,” but “languished more and more.” Hitler conceived of himself as a medical doctor. His task was to diagnose and cure Germany's disease. The “cure of a sickness,” Hitler declared, can be achieved "only if its cause is known;” and the same was true of “curing political evils.” Hitler stated that if one wanted to “cure this era which is inwardly sick and rotten,” one had to summon the courage to “make clear the causes” of the disease. The only way to cure diseased conditions was to “disclose their causes.” Hitler identified the Jew as the cause of Germany's disease, requiring radical surgery: the Final Solution. Hitler’s project was to wage a battle against the nation’s disease, lest Germany decay and “sink to ruin like a rotting corpse.” He would fight the “international carrier of the bacillus,” the Jew. He gave the order to “burn out down to the raw flesh the ulcers.” He would see to it that the “Bolshevik plague” did not spread over Europe. Hitler's desire was to “lance the cancerous ulcer”—to remove the “Jewish bacillus infecting the life of peoples.” As a result of his efforts, the German people—and Reich—would become “immune from a Bolshevik infection.” This was the core of Hitler’s ideology—his idea that Germany was suffering from a potentially fatal disease, the continuing presence of which within the body politic would lead to the death of the nation. It would appear that Hitler passionately experienced Germany’s disease. It was as if the disease within the body politic—the nation’s illness—was occurring within Hitler’s body. Recurring images and metaphors in Hitler’s writings and speeches reveal the fantasies that were the source of Hitler’s attraction to his ideology. The phantasies projected into his ideology were the source of the nature and shape of Hitler’s perception of reality. Many Germans resonated with Hitler's belief that Germany was suffering from a disease. Thus, the Final Solution, a monumental effort to cure Germany's disease. The enactment of this fantasy created history. |
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Table 6. The National Body is Diseased
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