Dr. Rudolf Ramm declared that the physician was to be concerned with the “health of the Volk” more than with individual disease. This was Nazism in a nutshell: belief that existence should be devoted to the nation rather than to lives of individuals. Whereas human lives are transitory, nations “live on.” What do our trivial lives amount to in comparison to the “world historic events” that nations generate? Nazism was an extreme case of a dynamic in which each of us is implicated. We strive to escape limited existence by relocating our small selves into a larger “national life”—happening “out there.” Hitler projected his body into the body politic, yet identified a “force of disintegration” opposing the ideal of an eternal Volk, equating this force  with none other than…the Jew! Jews symbolized the fact that each and every body dies. Upon being confronted with the reality of death (the Jew), Hitler became hysterical: “That no one can—no one must—say to me. Germany must live.” Hitler’s rage against Jews was a desperate struggle to “kill off” death.

The German people, according to Hitler, constituted a real body politic. It was to the maintenance of this body that Hitler devoted his life. Politics, he said, should be nothing other than the “practical waging of the life-battle” of the people with all means available.

All the functions of the body politic, according to Hitler, should ultimately fulfill only one purpose: “securing the preservation of this body in the future.”

The “body politic symbolized nothing more or less than culture itself: that which “lives on.” Leslie White called culture the “super-organic.” But for Hitler, culture was not superorganic (separate from human existence).

What was unique about Nazism was Hitler’s fantasy that culture (or the nation) and the human body—were fused into one entity. Hitler insisted that there was no separation between actual human bodies and the “symbolic” body, culture.

In Hitler’s conception, the body politic was fused with the human body (and with his own body). Still, there was a difference between the body politic and the human body: although human bodies die, Hitler felt that the German body politic was capable of living on eternally.

Professor Alfred Hoche wrote of the end of “atomistic individualism,” and of the transformation of the nation into an “organism of a higher order.” He argued that the Volk—this higher organism—had rights “above those of the individual.”

Dr. Rudolf Ramm (Lifton, 1986) declared that the physician was to be concerned with the “health of the Volk even more than with individual disease.” This was Nazism in a nutshell: belief that existence should be devoted to the life of the Volk or nation—rather than to the lives of individuals.

What is an individual human life? It is short—transitory; whereas nations “live on.” What do our trivial lives amount to—after all—in comparison to the grandiose “world historic events” that nations generate?

Nazism was an extreme case of the negation of individual human life in the name of devotion to a “higher” entity. But each and every one of us is implicated in this dynamic. We seek to relocate our existence—our small selves—into the larger “national life.” This metaphysical conception is the stuff of everyday life—as we continually strive to escape our limited existence in order to fuse with “big events” that seem to be taking place somewhere “out there.”

Hitler projected his own body into the German body politic—a self-perpetuating body which, unlike ordinary bodies, would not be subject to death and decay. He devoted his life to the fantasy of the eternal existence of the Reich.

Yet and still, each of us must come face to face with the reality that all human beings die—we will not live eternally. Hitler called this the “force of disintegration” (Koenigsberg, 2007) that was operative within the German body politic. Opposing the ideal of a Volk that could live forever, this ominous force within Germany sought to shatter the idea of German immortality.

Hitler equated this force of disintegration—the idea that all bodies die—with none other than…the Jew! Jews symbolized the reality that there is no such thing as bodies that live eternally. The Jew symbolized death: the fact that each and every body eventually passes into non-existence.

Upon being confronted with the reality of death (the Jew), Hitler became hysterical: “That no one can—no one must—say to me. Germany must live.” Hitler’s rage was rage against reality. He killed Jews in a desperate struggle to “kill off” the idea of death.

Killing Jews meant killing the idea that all bodies die: there is no such thing as a body that lives forever. Jews, in short, symbolized negation of National Socialism. The existence of Jews was incompatible with the idea of a German body politic that could live forever.