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IDEOLOGY, PERCEPTION, AND GENOCIDE: How Fantasy Generates History
Richard A. Koenigsberg
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IDEOLOGY, PERCEPTION, AND GENOCIDE: How Fantasy Generates History
Richard Koenigsberg

CONTENTS

I. METHOD

I developed a method for uncovering the sources of ideology by examining ideological statements as if manifest content of a dream--to reveal an ideology’s latent meaning. I emphasize specific words, phrases, images and metaphors bound to central terms of an ideology. Hitler’s Ideology (1975) presents recurring images and metaphors contained within Hitler’s writing and speeches, reconstructing the central fantasy that was the source of Nazism.

Hitler’s ideology revolved around the metaphor of the German nation as an actual body or "living organism." The Jew was identified as a force within the German organism acting to destroy it. In writings and speeches, Hitler referred to the Jew as a force of disintegration or decomposition; cause of Germany’s disease (a bacteria or virus); and as a "parasite on the body of the people." These recurring images and metaphors constitute data revealing the fantasies underlying Nazi ideology.

My method grows out of the assumption that language contains and expresses psychic meaning. The words, phrases, images and metaphors in the writings and speeches of Nazi leaders do not occur by chance. Rather, these symbolic constructions express ideas, desires and fantasies that were present in the minds of Hitler and other Nazis. I theorize that ideology is a social construction brought into being to express or articulate dimensions of the psyche. Ideologies are structures of thought allowing shared fantasies achieve a coherent form, and to make their way onto the stage of reality.

Ideologies are modus operandi expressing shared fantasies. Nazi ideology was like a dream or fantasy 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 popularity one needs to know what Hitler said that excited and energized the German people, causing them to rise to their feet shouting "Heil Hitler."

A fundamental source of Hitler’s success as a "charismatic leader" was the nature of the ideas he put forth and his ability to transmit these ideas in words that conveyed the meaning he intended. Many scholars note how Hitler expressed himself through his body and gestures. However, he also communicated through the use of specific words, phrases, metaphors and images. The ideas he expressed struck a chord within the German people. His words resonated by virtue of the fantasy that was contained within these words. Hitler said something that was deeply meaningful to many Germans.

II. THE COUNTRY AS A LIVING ORGANISM

At the heart of Hitler’s ideology lay his conception of the German nation as a living organism. "My Movement," Hitler declared, "Encompasses every aspect of the entire Volk. It conceives of Germany as a corporate body, as a single organism." According to Hitler there could be no such thing as "non-responsibility in this organic being, not a single cell which is not responsible, by its very existence, for the welfare and well-being of the whole." In Hitler’s view, there could not be "the least amount of room for apolitical people."

The image of the nation or people as an organism occurs frequently in writings of Nazi political theorists. Gottfried Neese stated, typically, that in contrast to the state, the people form "a true organism—a being which leads its own life and follows its own laws." The "living unity of the people has cells in its individual members," and just as in each body there are cells to perform certain tasks, this is "likewise the case in the body of the people."

This conception of the nation as a gigantic organism—with each individual constituting a cell—was the heart of Nazi totalitarianism. For if the nation is a single organism and each individual a cell, then no individual can escape this organism; each individual is responsible for the health of the organism; and the health of each individual (or cell) impacts upon the health of the entire organism.

Each human being, according to Nazi ideology, was either a healthy cell contributing to the functioning of the whole, or a malignant cell acting to destroy the nation. Jews were conceived as pathogenic cells—bacteria or virus—source of a disease within the body politic. The fantasy of Jews as bacteria or virus generated the Final Solution, whose purpose was to destroy these pathogenic cells, to save the life of Germany.

Since Hitler conceived of the nation as a living organism or real body politic, it followed that the purpose of politics was to maintain the health and life of this body. Politics, Hitler insisted, can be nothing other than the "realization of the vital interests of a people” and the "practical waging of its life-battle with all means available." This life-battle "has its initial starting point in the people."

The people is the "object, the value in and of itself which is to be preserved." All of the functions of the body politic should ultimately fulfill only one purpose: "securing the preservation of this body in the future." The purpose of politics, in short, was to make certain that the German body politic "lived on."

The discourse of nationalism reifies nations, speaks of and treats them as if they are beings possessing a life of their own. Typically, for example, people "love” or "hate” their nation, are said to be "healthy" or "sick" or "falling apart," etc. Nazism represented the apogee of nationalism in its tendency to reify the nation-state. Hitler conceived of Germany as an actual body (politic), claiming Germany was a "national organism" consisting of people as the cells of this organism.

III. GERMANY IS SUFFERING FROM A DISEASE

If the first part or foundation of Hitler’s ideology was his conception of Germany as a living organism, the second part—source what followed—was his belief that the nation was suffering from a disease that might prove fatal. From the earliest days of the National Socialist movement, Hitler was haunted by the specter of a disease within the body politic that could lead to the death and disappearance of the German nation. Hitler understood his role as political leader was first to diagnosis or disclose the cause of Germany’s illness; and secondly to act to cure it.

In Mein Kampf , Hitler wrote about the typical or ordinary German politician. It would be a mistake to believe, he said, that adherents of various politic tendencies who were "tinkering around on the national body" were bad or malevolent men. Their activity was condemned to sterility, however, because the best of them "saw at most the forms of our general disease and tried to combat them, but blindly ignored the virus." Ordinary politicians were aware that Germany was ill, but did not dig deeply, unable or unwilling to comprehend the cause of Germany’s disease.

Hitler, by contrast, would stake his claim to leadership by virtue of his capacity to diagnosis and cure Germany’s illness. He stated that people would follow a leader who "profoundly recognizes the distress of his people," works to attain the "ultimate clarity with regard to the nature of the disease," and then "seriously tries to cure it." Hitler aspired to become "Doctor of the German people."

Hitler conveyed his reflections on Germany’s disease and how he would deal with it, asserting that every distress has "some root or other." It was not enough for the Government to issue emergency regulations amounting to "doctoring around on the circumference of the distress and trying from time to time to lance the cancerous ulcer." It was necessary to "penetrate to the seat of the inflammation—the cause." Whether the irritating cause was discovered or removed today, or tomorrow was unimportant, the essential thing was to realize that "unless it is removed no cure is possible."

Hitler identified Jews as the source of Germany’s disease, a pathogenic organism whose continuing presence within the nation would lead to its demise. It was necessary, therefore—to cure Germany’s disease—to remove the Jew from within the body politic. According to Hitler’s biological conception, rescuing the life of Germany required removing the source of her disease from within the body politic. The Nazi movement was conceived as a struggle of life against death, between the healthy German organism and the viral Jewish element.

IV. LIFE AGAINST DEATH

The Nazi movement was a struggle of "live against death," conceived as a struggle between the disease from which the nation was suffering and the will of the German people. Hitler challenged Germans: Do you have the insight to perceive the nature and cause of the disease? Do you have the courage to rise up and take action against the cause? To take action meant that one would not shirk responsibility. However difficult or painful the course of action, one would take whatever measures necessary to save the life of the nation.

From the beginning of his career, Hitler’s ideology was framed around this "either-or" concept. "The future of Germany," Hitler declared, means the "annihilation of Marxism." Either this "racial tuberculosis" would thrive, and Germany would die out; or it would be "cut out of the Volk body" and Germany would thrive.

Either the nation would "sink," and the German people "through their despicable cowardice" would sink with it, or Germans would dare to "enter on the fight against death and rise up against the fate that has been planned for us." A momentous struggle would ensue to determine "which is stronger: the spirit of international Jewry or the will of Germany."

V. THE FINAL SOLUTION

The Nazis described the extermination of the Jews as 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.

Insofar as Jews were imagined to be the source of Germany’s disease, therefore the issue of national survival 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 devise a solution that would eliminate this threat once and for all. The development of the killing centers represented a manic, hysterical struggle to kill the source of death. The Final Solution grew out of a fantasy identifying Jews as bacteria that would continue to multiply and divide lest actions were taken to halt its spread.

I will now present data delineating the nexus between language and action. Studying the portrayal of Jews 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 army—allows one to understand the Nazis conception of the Jew, the source of the Holocaust. The following excerpts how Nazi images of the Jew generated the Final Solution.

From the beginning, the idea of the Jew as the source of a disease and the wish to eliminate the Jew lay at the heart of National Socialism. Hitler’s Official Programme, (Gottfried Feder, 1927) declared "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 Jews, C. C. Aronsfeld in Text of the Holocaust (1985) reports that after the Reichstag election in 1930, Count Reventlow called the Jew "a tapeworm in the human organism which it is our duty to exterminate." A German medical journal in June 1935 explained that just as weak people were liable to succumb to tuberculosis more easily than strong ones, so only racially weak people would "fall victim to the bacilli of Jewish infection."

Perhaps the most elaborate articulation of the fantasy that led to genocide appeared in a pamphlet of instruction issued in 1941 by the office of Rosenberg. The body, this pamphlet explained, is a highly developed ‘State’ composed of cells, a body that can be invaded by parasites that can "live in a body," multiply, and attach themselves to certain spots where they "secrete their poison."

These bacteria cause reactions of the body that can be compared with "internal processes in the life 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 should "cleanse its whole environment of the bacteria to prevent further infection."

With regard these processes, "Humanitarian principles cannot be taken into consideration at all" as little as humanitarian principles apply to "disinfecting a body or a contaminated room." It is necessary to clear a path for a "completely novel way of thinking." Only such thinking can lead to "the final decision” which must be made to "safeguard the existence of the great creative race."

The use of the body as metaphor for the state is applied so thoroughly in these passages that the reader becomes confused: the boundary between a human body and the nation-state blurs. The meaning is clear: the nation-state—like a body containing bacteria living within it—must "defeat the bacteria" that have penetrated into it, otherwise it will be defeated by them. Once the bacteria have been defeated, the body must "cleanse its whole environment" to prevent further infection.

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, any more than one would apply humanitarian principles to disinfecting a body." The author of the pamphlet recognizes he is clearing a path for a "completely novel way of thinking," however insists this new way of thinking is required so that a "final decision" can be made—to "safeguard the existence of the great creative race."

As the killing process unfolded in 1942 and 1943, the image of Jew as virus or bacteria was present in the minds of leading Nazis. 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, he said, 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."

On March 27, 1942, aware of the fact that the Final Solution had been undertaken, Goebbels wrote in his diary that "not much will remain of the Jews." The "procedure" was "pretty barbaric" and "not to be described here in detail." However, what was occurring was unavoidable in the face of the "life-and-death struggle between the Aryan race and the Jewish bacillus."

In a famous speech delivered to SS leaders and army generals in 1943, Himmler claimed Germany had "the moral right, the duty towards our people to destroy this people that wanted to destroy us" We do not want because we have destroyed a bacillus to be "infected by this bacillus and to die."

We observed that Hitler insisted early in his career 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. In a note dictated to Martin Bormann, Hitler declared that National Socialism had tackled the Jewish problem "by action and not by words." This action had been an essential "process of disinfection."

To the very end, Hitler did not alter his thinking. He believed he had remained "true to himself." Though the war was lost, he had achieved his primary objective: "We have lanced the Jewish abscess, and the world of the future will be eternally grateful to us."

The preceding passages document the relationship between the Nazi’s perception of reality and actions undertaken based on this perception. At the core of Nazi ideology was belief that a "disease" had invaded the body politic. In the absence of measures taken against this disease, Germany would die.

Jews were imagined as bacteria or virus, source of the nation’s disease. The Nazis constructed an institution of enormous scope whose purpose was systematically to murder these human beings conceived as bacteria. The elimination or destruction of the Jews was necessary, Hitler believe, so that Germany might "live on."

It is astonishing that this idea could have been believed and been the source of historical action. The bizarreness of the fantasy is matched by the bizarreness of the actions generated by this fantasy.

Many historians believed there were "real" reasons for the actions of the Nazis. The Enlightenment belief in "rationality" does not die easily. People seek to identify the sources of what occurred in the "real world."

Based on forty years of research, I conclude there were no "real" reasons. Jews posed no threat to Germany. I ask people to guess how many Jews there were in Germany in 1933 out of a population of 66 million. The responses I receive from educated people and even scholars range from three million to twenty million.

In actuality, there were 550,000 Jews in Germany in 1933, substantially less than 1% of the population. People find it difficult to imagine that the Jews were killed for no reason at all, that is, for purely psychological reasons. One understands the dynamics of genocide not by searching for "reasons," but by unpacking the logic contained within the Nazi fantasy.

The Holocaust was generated by a fantasy projected into the political arena revolving around the idea that Germany was an enormous body (politic) suffering from a disease that could prove fatal. Jews were identified as pathogenic cells—the source of the nation’s disease. The purpose of the Holocaust was to destroy these pathogenic cells.

VI. CONCLUSION

The Final Solution grew out of a fantasy present in the mind of Hitler, Nazi leaders and many Germans, a fantasy revolving around the nation as a body politic confronted with a threat to its existence in the form of a deadly disease, the Jew.

Hitler conceived of himself as "Doctor of Germany," the leader who had the capacity to diagnose and master Germany’s disease. Genocide was the cure: a monumental race against death—a struggle to destroy Jewish bacteria before these bacteria could destroy the nation.

All of this, of course, is fantastic. Jews were not bacteria, and exterminating Jews could not save the nation. Nevertheless, the Holocaust occurred. Many Germans people bought into this strange fantasy that in turn generated an equally strange social institution.

In his seminal essay, "The Jewish Parasite," Alex Bein suggested that Nazi ideology spread and took hold as because of the repeated use of "certain words and images that led to belief in the reality of a fantasy." In language, Bein explains, thoughts and conceptions are mirrored. Nazism crept into the flesh and blood of the masses "by means of single words, turns of phrase and stock expressions which, imposed upon the people a million times over in continuous reiteration, were mechanically and unconsciously absorbed by them."

The presentation of Jews as corroding and poisonous parasites, as vermin, bacteria and bacilli—everywhere infesting and striving to destroy the body of the German people as a whole and each individual German with a demonic power—"paralyzed to a large extent any internal resistance on the part of the masses." Lagarde’s metaphor of the Jews as "bacilli not to be negotiated with but to be exterminated" could, in the atmosphere of Bio-Mythology, become a horrible reality.

Moreover, Bein theorizes, it may well have been that the image of the Jew presented by the Nazis contributed to the method of extermination. Killing the Jews in gas chambers was the logical consequence of their "identification with parasites, cankers, bacilli and vermin." Once the Jews were perceived in this way, it was not only imperative to exterminate them, but also obvious that in the process the "same means we use against bacilli and vermin was to be employed: poison gas."

The Final Solution followed as a consequence of the perception of reality contained within Nazi ideology. Jews were depicted as bacteria or virus, source of a "disease within the body politic" that needed to be cured if the nation was to survive. Hitler, "Doctor of the people" diagnosed Germany’s disease and prescribed the cure. The cure that Hitler prescribed and carried out was destruction of the Jewish bacteria, genocide.