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At the heart of Hitler’s ideology was his conception of Germany 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." Thus 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." There could not be the least amount of room for “apolitical people."
In short, each and every German was like a cell in an enormous body. Given this conception, no cell could exist or act separately from the German body.
Political theorist Gottfried Neese stated that in contrast to the state, the people form "a true organism—a being which leads its own life and follows its own laws." This "living unity of the people has cells in its individual members." 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—lay at the heart of Nazi totalitarianism. If the nation is a single organism and each individual a cell, then no individual can escape this organism to act independently. Each individual is responsible for the health of the organism; and the health of each individual cell impacts upon the health of the entire organism.
While some cells contribute to the health of the national organism, other cells were not capable of making a contribution. Hitler believed he had identified the presence of malignant cells within the body politic acting to destroy it.
Jews were conceived as bacteria or virus—source of a disease within the German body politic. This fantasy of Jews as pathogenic cells generated the Final Solution, whose purpose was to destroy Jewish cells, thus saving the life of Germany. The Final Solution was a medical procedure.
Given that Germany was a real body, it followed that the purpose of politics was to maintain the health and life of this body. Politics could be nothing other than the practical waging of a people’s life-battle “with all means available." Since Hitler imagined that the health of the German body was threatened, politics became a “life and death struggle.”
"The people." Hitler declared, is "the object, the value in and of itself which is to be preserved." All of the functions of the body politic ultimately fulfill only one purpose: "securing the preservation of this body in the future.” The purpose of politics was to make certain that the German organism—"lived on."
The discourse of nationalism personifies or reifies nations. To this day, we speak of and treat nations as if they are living beings. These living beings may be healthy or sick, stable or in danger of “falling apart.” We speak of countries as if bodies possessing a life of their own. “History” is the narrative of these bodies called nations.
Nazism represented the apogee of the ideology of nationalism conceiving of countries as bodies. Hitler imagined that he and the German people constituted a single “national organism.” His struggle (Mein Kampf) was a struggle to keep the national organism alive.
Insofar as Hitler identified his own body with the German body politic, his struggle to rescue Germany was a struggle for his own survival. If Germany died, Hitler died.
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