Adolf Hitler: "My Movement conceives of Germany as a corporate body, a single organism. There is not a single cell which is not responsible, by its very existence, for the welfare and well-being of the whole." Nazi political theorist Gottfried Neese: "The people form a true organism—a being which leads its own life and follows its own laws. This living unity has cells in its individual members, and just as in every body there are cells to perform certain tasks, this is likewise the case in the body of the people."

My method grows out of the assumption that language contains and expresses psychic meaning. The words, phrases, images and metaphors that appear in the writings and speeches of Nazi leaders do not occur by chance.

Rather, these symbolic constructions express ideas, desires and fantasies that were present in the minds of Hitler and other Nazis. I theorize that an ideology is brought into being to express or articulate dimensions of the psyche. Ideologies, represent vehicles or “containers” that allow fantasies to be shared—articulated upon the stage of social reality.

Nazi anti-Semitism, for example, was the result of a fantasy shared by many Germans. It was like a dream that many human beings were having all at once—a dream so powerful that it gave rise to a social movement…and led to a series of events called “history.”

Hitler was the individual most deeply plugged in to the Nazi fantasy. He was possessed by his own ideology, and sought to share his excitement with others. Understanding Nazism requires that we decipher the words and images that Hitler used to convey his ideas. What, precisely, was he saying that caused so many Germans to jump to their feet and yell, “Heil Hitler?”

At the heart of Hitler's vision lay his conception of the German nation 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." According to Hitler 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." In Hitler's view, there could not be "the least amount of room for apolitical people."

The image of the nation or people as an organism occurs frequently in writings of Nazi political theorists. Gottfried Neese states, typically, that in contrast to the state, the people form "a true organism—a being which leads its own life and follows its own laws." The "living unity of the people has cells in its individual members," and just as in every 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. For if the nation is a single organism and each individual a cell, then no individual can escape this organism; each individual is responsible for the health of the organism; and the health of each individual (or cell) impacts upon the health of the entire organism.

Each human being is either a healthy cell contributing to the functioning of the whole, or a malignant cell acting to destroy the nation. As we shall observe, Jews were conceived as pathogenic cells—bacteria or virus—source of a disease within the body politic. The fantasy of Jews as bacteria or virus generated the Final Solution, whose purpose was to destroy these pathogenic cells, and thus to save the life of Germany.

Insofar as Hitler conceived of the nation as a living organism or real body politic, it followed that the purpose of politics was to maintain the health and life of this body. Politics, Hitler insisted, can be nothing other than the "realization of the vital interests of a people” and the "practical waging of its life-battle with all means available." This life-battle "has its initial starting point in the people."