A LIBRARY OF SOCIAL SCIENCE PAPER
Nationalism, Nazism—Genocide
by Richard Koenigsberg
For a complete list of Richard Koenigsberg’s essays and papers, please click here.

Hitler's Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Sociology

Complete documentation—the empirical data out of which this essay grows—appears in Koenigsberg’s classic Hitler’s Ideology—called “the best critical analysis in English of Hitler’s thought.” For a limited time, Hitler’s Ideology is available through Amazon at a very special price.

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Nazi ideology grew out of a systematic fantasy projected into reality—revolving around the idea of Germany as an actual body (politic) containing a deadly, destructive force. The Final Solution represented a response to this fantasy: an enactment. The death camps—a massive social institution—represents a case study in the "social construction of reality." The nature and shape of the reality constructed by the Nazis derived from the fantasy contained within their ideology.


I. NAZISM AS NATIONALISM

Nazism represented an extreme form of nationalism. Hitler preached to his people: "Your life is bound up with the life of your whole people. The nation is not merely the root of your strength; it is the root of your very life." He asked his people to acknowledge their profound dependence upon Germany: “Our Nation is not just an idea in which you have no part; you yourself support the nation; to it you belong; you cannot separate yourself from it.”

Hitler explained: "You are nothing, your nation is everything." Human beings in and of themselves were “nothing.” On the other hand, one’s nation was “everything.” in order to become “everything” (by virtue of identification with one’s nation), one had to become nothing. Self-inflation required self-negation.

To partake of one’s nation’s omnipotence, one had to erase individuality. Hitler's Nazism simultaneously was an orgy of self-glorification and self-abnegation. What was glorified was the collective. What was abnegated was the human being, who traded in his or her individuality to become "at one" with Germany.

Rudolf Hess often introduced his Fueher at mass-rallies declaring, "Hitler is Germany, just as Germany is Hitler." At the core of Nazism was the mystical sense of "oneness" between Hitler and Germany. Nazism did not differ from ordinary nationalism that posits an intimate tie between the life of the individual and national life. What Hitler did was to carry the ordinary idea of "identification with one's nation" to an extreme, bizarre conclusion, revealing the heart of darkness contained within "love of country."

II. 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 said, 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 was being assaulted by forces that threatened to destroy it; bring about the nation’s demise. National Socialism represented a response to the desire of Hitler and others to "save" the nation; 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?" Hitler claimed Jews were working to bring about the "political disintegration of the body of a people." The Jewish force of disintegration was working to cause the body politic to fragment; break into pieces.

Given the danger that Germany would fall to pieces, Hitler's strategy was to unite or unify the German people: bind them together into a single, indestructible body. To solve the problems of Germany, 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."

III. NAZI IDEOLOGY

Robert J. Lifton's book, The Nazi Doctors (1986) provides evidence that the fantasy that drove Hitler's thinking drove the thinking of other Nazis as well. Lifton spent several years interviewing 29 men who had been significantly involved at high levels with Nazi medicine. Lifton's reconstruction of the deep-structure of Nazi ideology presented in his book is based upon these interviews, combined with an analysis of written accounts, documents, speeches, diaries, and letters.

The central fantasy uncovered by Lifton was that of the German nation as an organism that could succumb to an illness. Lifton cites Dr. Johann S. who spoke about being "doctor to the Volkskorper (‘national body’ or ‘people's’ body)." National Socialism, Dr. Johann S. said, is a movement rather than a party, constantly growing and changing according to the "health" requirements of the people's body. "Just as a body may succumb to illness," the doctor declared, so "the Volkskorper could do the same."

When Lifton asked another doctor, Fritz Klein, how he could reconcile the concentration camps with his Hippocratic Oath to save lives, he replied "Of course I am a doctor and I want to preserve life. And out of respect for human life, I would remove a gangrenous appendix from a diseased body. The Jew is the gangrenous appendix in the body of mankind." Lifton mentioned this phrase "gangrenous appendix" to another Nazi, Dr. B., who quickly answered that his overall feeling and that of the other Nazi doctors was that "Whether you want to call it an appendix or not, it must be extirpated (ausgerottet, meaning also "exterminated," "destroyed," "eradicated").

Goebbels put it this way: "Our task here is surgical; drastic incisions, or some day Europe will perish of the Jewish disease." Hans Frank, General Governor of Poland during the Nazi occupation, called Jews "a lower species of life, a kind of vermin, which upon contact infected the German people with deadly diseases." When the Jews in the area he ruled had been killed, he declared that, "Now a sick Europe will become healthy again."

Finally, on February 22, 1942, Hitler made the following astonishing statement: "The discovery of the Jewish virus is one of the greatest revolutions that have taken place in the world. The battle we are engaged in is of the same sort as the battle waged during the last century, by Pasteur and Koch."

IV. CONCLUSION

Nazi ideology grew out of a systematic fantasy projected into reality. This fantasy revolved around the idea of Germany as an actual body (politic) containing a deadly disease. The Final Solution and death camps represented a response to this fantasy: an enactment. The death camps—a massive social institution—represents a case study in the "social construction of reality." The nature and shape of the reality constructed by the Nazis derived from the fantasy contained within their ideology.