|
THE FINAL SOLUTION: Killing the Cause of Death
The Nazis called the extermination of the Jews--the "Final Solution." If exterminating Jews was the solution, what was the "problem" requiring killing Jews as the solution to the problem? The problem the Nazis sought to resolve by killing Jews was the problem of death.
Since Jews were the source of Germany’s disease, therefore the question of national survival (the struggle against death) could not be resolved until the source of disease—the Jew—was removed from within the body politic. The Nazis did not wish to have the specter of the Jewish disease hanging over their heads. Better to resolve this threat—once and for all. The killing centers evolved as a manic, hysterical struggle to kill the cause of death.
The Holocaust appeared “incomprehensible” because human beings could not imagine such an extreme form of violence being carried out by a “civilized” nation. However, plugging into Hitler’s thought processes, it is not difficult to understand the strange, grotesque logic that generated the Holocaust. The Final Solution grew out of a fantasy: identifying Jews as bacteria that would multiply and divide lest actions were taken to halt their spread.
There was a nexus between thought and action. One may perceive the thinking that led to the Final Solution by examining depictions of Jews during the Nazi era. In newspapers, books, movies, radio broadcasts, magazine and journal articles—as well as in speeches and proclamations issued by leaders, official organs of the party, government and the army—one discovers a consistent portrayal of the Jews--a systematic fantasy.
From the beginning, the idea of the Jew as the source of a disease—and the wish to eliminate the Jew as the source of Germany's disease—lay at the heart of National Socialism. Hitler’s Official Programme (Gottfried Feder, 1927), declared that Anti-Semitism is the “emotional foundation of our movement." The anti-Semite "recognizes the carrier of the national plague-germ and demands the expulsion of the Jew from our state."
Tracing the evolving perception of the Jew as the source of Germany's disease, C. C. Aronsfeld (Text of the Holocaust, 1985) says that Count Reventlow (in 1930) called the Jew "a tape-worm in the human organism which it is our duty to exterminate." A German medical journal in 1935 explained that just as weak people were liable to succumb to tuberculosis more easily than strong ones, so only racially weak people "fall victim to the bacilli of Jewish infection."
One of the most elaborate articulations of the fantasy that led to genocide appeared in a 1941 pamphlet from the office of Rosenberg. The pamphlet explained that the human body is a highly developed ‘State’ composed of cells. This body can be invaded by “parasites, such as bacteria," which can "live in a body, multiply, and attach themselves to certain spots," where they "secrete their poison."
These bacteria cause reactions in the body comparable to “internal processes in the lives of nations.” A national body thus afflicted must "defeat the bacteria which have penetrated it;" otherwise it will be defeated by them. Once the nation has defeated the bacteria, it then should "cleanse its whole environment of the bacteria to prevent further infection."
With regard to these processes, "Humanitarian principles cannot be taken into consideration," as little as humanitarian principles apply to "disinfecting a body or a contaminated room." It was necessary to clear a path for a "completely novel way of thinking" that could lead to "the final decision” that had to be made to “safeguard the existence of the great creative race."
The use of the body as a metaphor for the state is applied so thoroughly in these passages that the boundary between the idea of the human body and the idea of the nation-state blurs. The meaning is clear: The nation-state—like a body containing bacteria—must "defeat the bacteria" that have penetrated into it. Otherwise, this body will die.
The Final Solution was a form of "cleansing:" eliminating Jewish bacteria from within the nation. With regard to this process, "humanitarian principles" could not be taken into consideration. The pamphlet recognizes that the Nazis are is clearing a path for a "completely novel way of thinking," but insists that this unusual policy is necessary.
In February 1942, Hitler proclaimed that the "discovery of the Jewish virus" is one of the "greatest revolutions the world has seen." The struggle in which the Nazis were engaged was similar to the one "waged by Pasteur and Koch in the last century. How many diseases must owe their origins to the Jewish virus? Only when we have eliminated the Jews will we regain our health."
Hitler imagined that his Final Solution project was comparable to the projects of two great scientists—who had discovered the pathogens responsible for the diseases of smallpox and tuberculosis. He conceived his project in terms of immunology. He had identified the cause of Germany illness and was determined to cure the disease by destroying the pathogen.
The cause of Germany’s disease was the Jewish virus or bacteria. How extraordinary that Hitler was able to enact this medical fantasy in relation to the German body politic: the final solution or extermination as destroying Jewish bacteria in order to save Germany from death. The ideology is bizarre, but what is extraordinary is that the Nazis enacted a form of behavior based entirely on ideological propositions they had set forth.
On March 27, 1942, aware that the Final Solution was underway, Goebbels wrote in his diary that "not much will remain of the Jews." He acknowledged that the procedure was "pretty barbaric, not to be described in detail." Nevertheless, the policy of extermination was unavoidable given the reality of the "life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus." It was question of “either-or.” Either the Aryan race would survive—or the Jewish bacillus would continue to multiply and divide, leading to the death of Germany.
In a famous speech delivered to SS leaders and army generals in 1943, Himmler claimed that Germany had "the moral right, the duty towards our people, to destroy this people that wanted to destroy us" We do not want, he said, "because we have destroyed a bacillus to be infected by this bacillus and to die."
We’ve noted that Hitler wrote in in Mein Kampf that it was insufficient for politicians to "doctor around on the circumference of the distress" without acting to "lance the cancerous ulcer." By February 4, 1945 when the war clearly was lost, Hitler continued to speak in these terms. Dictating to Martin Bormann, he declared that National Socialism had tackled the Jewish problem "by action and not by words." The Final Solution had been an essential "process of disinfection."
To the end, Hitler did not alter his view. He remained "true to himself." He did not abandon the fantastic fantasy that had generated the Holocaust. Though the war was lost, he claimed he had achieved his objective: "We have lanced the Jewish abscess, and the world of the future will be eternally grateful to us."
|