THE HOLOCAUST AS BACTERIOLOGY: HITLER AS ROBERT KOCH
Richard Koenigsberg
Hitler, July 10, 1941: "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."

Hitler, February 22, 1942: "The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that has taken place in the world. The battle in which we are engaged today is of the same sort as the battle waged by Pasteur and Koch. How many diseases have their origin in the Jewish virus! We shall regain our health only by eliminating the Jew."

March 24, 1882: Robert Koch announced the Discovery of the Tubercle Bacillus—the cause of tuberculosis—to the Berlin Physiological Society.
Robert Koch presented his discovery of the bacterium that causes tuberculosis on March 24, 1882, leading to widespread adulation of Koch—and development of "bacteriology"— whose basic message was that each disease was caused by a specific pathogen. If one could identify and isolate the pathogenic organism and destroy it—the disease could be cured.

Writing on the history of German medicine, Paul Weindling (1993) describes how bacteriologists became aligned with the state—through the use of military analogies. Koch described how "alien parasites" entered the body. Laboratory researchers were compared to soldiers: "Warrior against disease."

There was widespread adulation of Koch. Thousands of handkerchiefs on which his face was embroidered were sold. Just as the bacterium causing tuberculosis had been isolated, so it was hoped that the germs of mental illness, criminality and feeble-mindedness could also be located.
Called an "instant classic" and the "best critical analysis of Hitler's thought," Hitler's Ideology is required reading for research on Hitler, Nazism and the Final Solution. Scholars consult this book first.

Available as an eBook at the special price of $2.98 (list, $25.00). Click this link to order.