Nationalism directs the struggle for survival away from actual, human bodies into bodies politic. The body politic becomes a substitute or stand-in for the human body, which--when war is waged--is nourished by the blood of human beings.
Human beings create and identify with nations based on the fantasy that countries are immortal. Unlike actual bodies (frail and vulnerable, subject to death and decay) nations are imagined as invulnerable bodies—capable of “living on” through time.
Hitler proclaimed to his German people, “You are nothing, your nation is everything.”
What was nothing was the German human being’s actual existence. What was everything was the idea of a volk that could live forever. Germans became nothing thus bringing "Germany" into existence.
“The individual must die so the nation may live.”
This slogan suggests that when a human being dies in war, blood drained from human bodies pours into bodies politics, infusing them with life.