IDEOLOGY, PERCEPTION, AND GENOCIDE: How Fantasy Generates History

Ideologies constitute modus operandi for the expression of shared fantasies. Nazi ideology was like a dream that many people were having at the same time. This shared fantasy was powerful enough to give rise to a social movement, and to shape the course of history.

Hitler himself was deeply plugged into the Nazi fantasy—possessed by it—and had the capacity to convey this fantasy to the German people. To know why Nazism achieved such popularity, we need to determine what it was Hitler said that excited and energized the German people, causing them to rise to their feet shouting "Heil Hitler.

Richard Koenigsberg