All organisms die. Hitler aspired to fashion Germany as a unique kind of organism: not subject to decay or death. He embraced the idea of Germany as an immortal organism that could “live on.”

The nationalist dreams that his own body is bound to an omnipotent body, constituting an extension of his ego. To identify with one’s nation is to imagine one's own body as a body politic fused with a gigantic organism. Identifying with one’s nation means one is no longer a small, insignificant individual. Rather, one’s own body becomes co-extensive with a gigantic, omnipotent body.

Hitler embraced the idea of Germany as an immortal entity not subject to death and decay. If Jews could be removed from within the body politic, Hitler believed—then the German body politic could live forever. In spite of Hitler’s prodigious efforts, however, he could not convince himself that he had destroyed death; could not escape the feeling that Germany was disintegrating.

The nationalist splits off part of himself and projects it into the idea of “the country.” “Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler:” The body politic—Germany—becomes co-extensive with Hitler’s own body. Hitler imagines he is fused with a gigantic, object. The massive body politic fuses with Hitler’s actual body.

Identification with a body politic implies escape from one’s own body. In nationalism, the self is relocated into a place outside the self. One’s actual body is denied in the name of devotion to a body politic. This second body sequesters peoples’ energies: the individual must die so the nation might live.