HITLER AND CRITICAL SECURITY STUDIES

The essay on the left is a condensed version of the complete paper that appears on our website. Hitler’s thinking illuminates the field of security studies. “National defense,” for Hitler, had nothing to do with protecting actual human beings. On the contrary, Hitler insists again and again that he aspires to protect "the people" (i.e., the nation) at the expense of the individual. What Hitler sought to defend was not human beings, but rather an idea or fantasy: the belief in the omnipotence and immortality of the German nation.

The Denial of Death by Ernest Becker

Winner of the Pulitzer prize in 1974, The Denial of Death is Ernest Becker's brilliant and impassioned answer to the "why" of human existence. Becker tackles the problem of the vital lie — man's refusal to acknowledge his own mortality.

"One of the few great books of the 20th or any other century."
—Albuquerque Journal Book Review

Escape from Evil by Ernest Becker

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Denial of Death, a penetrating and insightful perspective on the source of evil in our world.

“Brilliant and challenging…of the highest importance.”
—Los Angeles Times

SAFEGUARDING "THE PEOPLE" AT THE EXPENSE OF THE INDIVIDUAL

Nazism was an extreme form of nationalism—insisting on radical identification between self and nation. Hitler asked his people to acknowledge and embrace 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; your life is bound up with the life of your whole people.” Hitler's oratory focused upon persuading Germans that they could not separate their own lives from the life of their nation.

Hitler asserted, “The individual is transitory, the people is permanent.” He stated that the liberal worldview, in its deification of the individual, must lead to the “destruction of the people.” National Socialism, on the other hand, desired to “safeguard the people” even, if necessary, “at the expense of the individual.”

What does this mean—to say that the deification of the individual leads to the destruction of the people? To claim that one wishes to safeguard the people at the expense of the individual?

It is clear that the term “the people” does not refer to actual human beings. What is the meaning of this concept that Hitler refers to continually, “the people,” or “the German people”?

In one of his speeches, Hitler poses the question, “What is life?” and responds by asserting, “Life is the Nation.” Individuals have to die, but “beyond the life of the individual is the nation.”

“THE PEOPLE” = A NATIONAL COMMUNITY THAT LIVES FOREVER

Ernest Becker hypothesized that the denial of death lies at the source of culture building and creation of ideological systems. According to Becker, human beings attach desperately to symbolic systems that contain the promise or possibility of “living on” after one dies. The ego attaches to an ideology, equating self-perpetuationwith perpetuation of an ideology with which it identifies. Human beings bind to “immortality systems” that they defend hysterically and violently.

For Hitler, Germany was the immortal object with which he identified. Ordinary organisms break down or disintegrate. The Nazis imagined that they could shape a German nation that would become a different kind of organism. Denial of death took the form of attempting to forge an indestructible body politic that would live forever.

Hitler's ideology revolved around “maintaining the life of the nation.” While individual Germans died, the German nation would “live on.” Hitler's dream of ceaseless existence—his fantasy of immortality—was projected into the idea of the never-ending existence of Germany.

The cultural impulse often is directed toward building monuments—for example, megaliths and pyramids—which survive longer than the individual human’s life span. Hitler relished the creation of monumental buildings to “strengthen the National Socialist State.” Since “we believe in the eternity of this Reich,” Hitler proclaimed, “these works of ours shall also be eternal.”

Buildings, however, were only a symbol of the “eternity of the Reich.” The fundamental meaning of immortality, for Hitler, was that of “a people which lives forever.” Nazi ideology was designed to lead the individual “away from the personal to the eternal.” Though men come and men die, Hitler declared, “This community shall last forever.”

We now understand what Hitler meant when he said that National Socialism strove to “safeguard the people as such, if necessary at the expense of the individual.” The term “the people” has nothing to do with actual human beings. Rather, this term symbolized the idea of a nation or national community that could live forever. Nazism meant renunciation of individual life in the name of devotion to the immortal community. Individuals come and go, but “a people” could last forever.

GERMANY AS A BODY THAT WOULD NOT SUCCUMB TO DEATH

Many social movements are sustained by this dream of immortality. What distinguished Hitler's ideology was the extent to which the idea of immortality was conceived in physical or bodily terms. Hitler's fantasy revolved around perpetuating Germany as an actual body (politic). Hitler stated that what he had “called into life in these years”—his Nazi movement—would not be “an end in itself,” since “all can and will be transient.” What would endure was the “permanent element,” that is, the “substance of flesh and blood which we call the German people.”

Hitler was not satisfied with the idea of the nation as an abstraction, or “imagined community” or social construction. He was an early embodiment theorist. Germany, Hitler claimed, was a real body, a genuine “substance” of flesh and blood. It was to this actual body—the immortal body politic—that he devoted his existence.

Hitler's project was to create a people so closely united—fused together—that they would think, feel and act as a single organism. Such a body politic would be indestructible, not only in the present, but in the future as well. Hitler and the Nazis devoted their lives to creating an organism that would be different from all other organisms. They aspired to fashion a body (politic) that was so healthy and powerful that it would never succumb to death.

DESTROYING DEATH

The Jew in Hitler's ideology was a force working to destroy Germany. National Socialism was the attempt to come to terms with this destructive force. The “Final Solution”—the concluding phase of Hitler's struggle against death—represented a form of radical surgery whose purpose was to “remove” the Jewish principle of death. By eliminating the Jew, Hitler hoped to quash the process of disintegration. He aspired to defeat death by embracing the idea of a body politic that could live forever.

The “Jew” represented Hitler's own perception of death: his recognition or realization that all bodies die. Despite his struggle to deny death, he could not entirely repress the voice within that spoke the truth. Still, Hitler refused to heed this inner voice declaring that all bodies die. Rather, hearing this voice, he became infuriated, enraged. To embrace the truth, Hitler would have had to acknowledge that his Nazi project had been in vain; that he had devoted his life to an illusion.

Therefore, in a climactic act of manic determination, Hitler initiated the Final Solution: a struggle to destroy death—the Jew—once and for all. Hitler insisted that Germany would not die; that the body politic could live forever. Genocide represented Hitler's final attempt to solve the problem of death by destroying Jews, who symbolized death—the reality that bodies eventually disintegrate.