by Richard A. Koenigsberg

CONTENTS

1. The Hypothesis
2. Nazism and the Ideology of Nationalism
3. Hitler’s Ideology
4. Nazi Ideology
5. The Dream of Nazism as the Dream of Nationalism
6. Conclusion

III. HITLER’S IDEOLOGY

Hitler’s ideology grew out of his fantasy of the German nation as an actual organism or body (politic). “Our movement alone,” Hitler declared, “was capable of creating a national organism.” In place of the State, Hitler must be set “the living organism—the people.” Hitler conceived of Germany as a body politic consisting of German people as its cells.

It followed that the purpose of politics was to preserve the body politic: to “maintain the substance of the people in bodily and mental health, in good order and purity.” According to Hitler, the supreme test of every politic institution was: “Does it serve to preserve the people or not.”

Germany, however, had a problem. An otherwise healthy body politic, Hitler believed, was being assailed or assaulted by forces that threatened to destroy it; bring about the demise of the nation. National Socialism came into being as a response to the desire of Hitler and others to rescue or “save” the nation; to prevent it from dying. Hitler was determined to “prevent our Germany from suffering, as Another did, the death upon the cross.”

Throughout his political career, Hitler was tormented by his conviction that an unprecedented, cosmic force was working toward the destruction, not only of Germany, but of Western civilization. Hitler declared that it was only rarely that the life of peoples “suffers from such convulsions that the deepest foundations of the edifice of social order are shaken” and threatened with destruction.

“Who will refuse to see or even deny,” Hitler said, that today we find ourselves in the midst of a struggle that is not concerned merely with the problems of frontiers between peoples or States, but rather with the question of the maintenance or annihilation of the whole inherited human order of society and its civilizations?”

The phrase that appears most frequently in Hitler’s speeches describing this threat to Germany and Western civilization is translated as “force of disintegration.” The German word “zersetzung” is a term from chemistry meaning “decomposition:” that which breaks things down into their component parts.

Hitler claimed Jews were working to bring about the “political disintegration of the body of a people.” Hitler believed that the Jewish force of disintegration was working to cause the nation to fragment, break into pieces.

Given the danger that Germany would fall to pieces, Hitler’s fundamental political strategies was to act to unite or unify the German people: bind them together into a single, indestructible body. To solve the problems of Germany, Hitler said, it was essential to bring people together so that “millions of individuals could be fused into a unity.” Hitler would act to bring about the “inner welding together of the body of our people,” insisting that men throw themselves into the “great melting pot, the nation” so that they could be “welded one to another.”

We’ve observed that Hitler conceived of Germany as a gigantic “national organism” consisting of people as cells of this body. Hitler’s efforts to unify or unite the German people, therefore, reflected his desire to fuse together the cells of the German nation into a cohesive body (politic). National Socialism grew out of Hitler’s belief that Germany was disintegrating. His struggle (Mein Kampf) reflected his desire to create a German body politic that was so cohesive—powerful—that it would not succumb to the internal force threatening to cause it to disintegrate.

Hitler’s ideology, then, revolved around his conception of a unified German body politic, on the one hand, and a Jewish force of destruction, on the other, acting to cause Germany to fall apart. Hitler called the Jew the “demon of the disintegration of peoples,” symbol of the “unceasing destruction of their life.” The project of National Socialism, therefore, was “glorification of the national creative will over against the conception of international disintegration.”

As National Socialism consolidated its power, Hitler believed he had achieved his goal of welding the German people into a single, omnipotent body politic. Affirming his determination to protect his accomplishment, Hitler declared, “Our people have become one, and this unity in Germany will never break into pieces.”

He insisted that his Movement would leave behind a German body politic “completely renewed internally,” intolerant of anyone who sins against the nation and its interests, intolerant and pitiless against anyone who shall “attempt once more to destroy or disintegrate this body politic.”

If the first most frequently used phrase by Hitler to describe the threat to Germany was that of a “force of disintegration,” the second was that of a “disease within the body politic” whose continued presence within the nation could lead to its death. Hitler and other Nazis believed that Germany was suffering from a potentially fatal disease whose source was “Jewish bacteria.”

Hitler approached politics as a physician, observing that “Every distress has some root or other.” In order to cure the nation’s disease, it was not sufficient to behave like conventional politicians who merely “doctored around on the circumference of the distress” and only occasionally tried to “lance the cancerous ulcer.”

Rather, Hitler believed, to cure Germany’s disease, it was necessary to “penetrate to the seat of the inflammation—to the cause.” It was relatively unimportant, Hitler said, whether this irritating cause was discovered or removed today or tomorrow. The essential thing to realize was that unless the cause was removed “no cure is possible.”