Germany Possesses an Immune System

Nazism developed a systematic body of thought building on the idea that the German nation possessed an immune system. A corollary to this idea was that Jews were pathogenic organisms--bacteria, virus and parasites--residing within the German body politic. Their presence, threatened to destroy the nation. 

Genocide grew out of the theory that Germany was a body possessing an immune system. The nation--like any other organism--could act in no other way but to act to eliminate alien, not-self cells.

An early advocate of euthanasia, Alfred Hoche, claimed that the state was a “whole with its own laws, much like one self-contained human organism which, in the interests of the whole—as we doctors know—abandons and rejects particles that have become worthless or useless.”

In Mein Kampf (1924), Hitler posed the question, “Could anyone believe that Germany alone was not subject to exactly the same law as all other human organisms?” What was the law to which Hitler referred?

Hitler was referring to the law of the immune system. David Wilson (1971) observes that the only way an animal body can cope with the enormous range of disease organisms threatening it is by some mechanism that “recognizes what is ‘self’ and rejects everything else as ‘not self’.” Physician Ronald Glasser (2012) explains that the immune system depends on the ability of one cell to "recognize a cell unlike itself.” Recognition precedes destruction. Once a cell has been identified as foreign, different, or not-self, "the attack upon this cell begins."

Jews were identified as alien, "not-self cells" within the German body politic. Thus, the German organism could react in no other way but to reject or destroy these alien cells that threatened the life of the nation. The Final Solution--genocide--grew out of this fantasy that Germany was a body with an immune system. This body—like any organism—would proceed naturally to destroy foreign cells. Jews were identified as alien cells within the German body politic. In Nazi writings, they were called viruses or bacteria or parasites--threatening the health of Germany. It was urgent that these cells be removed or destroyed or eliminated--at whatever cost. The survival of the nation was at stake.
 

The Final Solution: Destroying Jewish Bacteria

Himmler stated that “alien bloodlines” had merged into the German people. Yet Germans had the strength to sift out and cast aside what “did not belong to us.” In a speech before the Reichstag on January 30, 1937, Hitler explained that his anti-Jewish policy was designed to make the German people “immune against this infection.” Germans had to avoid contact with the “carriers of this poisonous bacillus.”

Based upon in depth-interviews with surviving Nazi Doctors, Robert Lifton (1986) discovered that many doctors embraced and acted upon this idea of Germany as a body with an immune system. Dr. Rudolph Ramm explained to Lifton that physicians in Nazi Germany were to be concerned “with the health of the Volk even more than with individual disease.” The health of the Volk depended on destroying pathogenic cells. Rudolph Hess decalred that National Socialism was “nothing but applied biology.”

In his 1935-6 booklet on the SS as an anti-Bolshevik battle organization, Himmler stated that the life and death struggle between Jews and other peoples was part of the “natural course of life on our planet.” The struggle of Jews against nations was a law of nature, similar to the struggle of “the plague bacillus against the healthy body.” Jews could not help themselves. Like bacteria or parasites, their natural tendency was to invade healthy bodies--and work to destroy these bodies.

It followed that, just as Jews were pathogenic microorganism working to destroy bodies, so healthy bodies would act in the name of survival to destroy pathogenic microorganisms. This was a law of nature. The German body politic could act in no other way. 

A pamphlet by Alfred Rosenberg (1941) compared the state to a “body that can be invaded by parasites, such as bacteria.” These bacteria “live in a body, multiply, and secrete their poison.” A nation or body thus afflicted must “defeat the bacteria which have penetrated it."

With regard to processes of this kind, "Humanitarian principles cannot be taken into consideration." Such measures do not apply when one is "disinfecting a body or a contaminated room." In such cases, it is necessary to clear a path for a "completely novel way of thinking." Only such thinking could lead to "the final decision” which must be made to “safeguard the existence of the great creative race."

The “final decision” became the “Final Solution”—truly a “novel way of thinking” that led to a novel, fantastic form of behavior. Genocide grew out of this fantasy of Germany as a body containing Jewish bacteria that had to be destroyed if the nation was to survive. Jews--as foreign cells alien to the German self—generating an immune response.
 

Hitler as Robert Koch

Goebbels noted in a diary entry on March 27, 1942 (1948)—as the Final Solution was underway—that "the procedure was pretty barbaric. Not much would remain of the Jews. Such actions, nonetheless, were unavoidable—given the nature of the “life and death struggle” that was being waged between the “Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus.”

In his speech to SS leaders on October 4, 1943, Himmler claimed that Germany had the moral right—the “duty toward our people” --to “destroy this people that wanted to destroy us.” We do not want to be “infected by this bacillus and to die.”

Germans called Hitler the “Doctor of the German people.” On July 19, 1941, he declared:

I feel I am like Robert Koch in politics. He discovered the bacillus and thereby ushered medical science onto new paths. I discovered the Jew as the bacillus and fermenting agent of all social decomposition.

On February 22, 1942, Hitler reiterated his understanding of the Nazi movement:

This is one of the greatest revolutions there has ever been in the world. The Jew will be identified! The same fight that Pasteur and Koch had to fight must be led by us today. Innumerable sicknesses have their origin in one bacillus: the Jew! We will get well when we eliminate the Jew.
 

“We Have Lanced the Jewish Abscess”

The Final Solution grew out of the idea of Germany as an actual body containing Jewish bacteria—conceived as the source of Germany’s disease. Genocide represented a desperate, hysterical, manic struggle to destroy Jews—in order to save the life of the nation.

As the war wound down—with Germany defeated—Hitler dictated his “Testament” to Martin Bormann (published in 1961 as The Testament Of Adolf Hitler: The Hitler-Bormann Documents, February-April 1945. In spite of everything, Hitler embraced and reaffirmed the mission that had driven and guided him from the beginning of his political career, reflecting upon what he had “achieved.”

He asked the German people to respect the racial laws that the Nazis had laid down. In a world becoming “more and more perverted through the Jewish virus,” a people that remained immune to the viru must “in the long run remain supreme.” Though the war was lost, National Socialism could claim the “eternal gratitude of the people” for having “eliminated the Jew from Germany and Central Europe.” Hitler remained unrepentant: “We have lanced the Jewish abscess; and the world of the future will be eternally grateful to us.”

Bibliography

Glasser, R. (1976). The body is the hero. New York: Random House.

Hitler, Adolf. & Stevens, R. H. & Bormann, Martin. & Genoud, Francoise. (1961). The testament of Adolf Hitler: the Hitler-Bormann documents, February-April 1945. London: Cassell

Lifton, Robert J. (1986). The Nazi doctors: medical killing and the psychology of genocide. New York: Basic Books.

Wilson, D. (1972). The science of self: a report of the new immunology. London: Longman.