"Thus in my view there is not the least amount of room for apolitical people. Every German, whether he wants to be or not, is by virtue of his being born into German destiny, by the face of his existence, a representative of the form of existence of this very Germany."
From Kolnai, War on the West: "The National Socialists expected every member of the Volk to fill himself with the life of the communal 'organism,' just as arms, legs and leaves are pervaded by the existence of the organisms to which they belong."
In the Nazi fantasy, the nation is an enormous body, a gigantic organism. All else follows from this fantasy of the nation as an actual body. The goal of Nazism was to maintain the health of the national body so that it would live on in the future. Hitler: “This body formed by the people must secure in the future the maintenance of this body which is the people.”
The problem is that the body contains destructive forces: a force of disintegration or decomposition; a disease caused by a bacteria, virus or cancer; a parasite which is eating away at the body of the people. Hitler: The Jew becomes a "ferment of decomposition" among people and in the broader sense a dissolver of human culture.
Hitler is, fundamentally, a philosopher of nationalism and anti-Semitism: The Jew is causing the German body politic to disintegrate or decompose. Hitler's goal is to "build up" the body politic by bringing the German people together into a single block so that no one in the future will be able to "shatter" the German Reich: to "tear it asunder."
The Nazi movement is the struggle of "life against death:" the struggle is that of the "national creative will" against the conception of "international disintegration." This is a question of the "restoration to health of peoples." To create a cohesive body politic which will never shatter, Hitler declared, "The whole German nation must be brought to a unity of spirit and will. In order to bring men gradually nearer to each other they must be thrown into the great melting pot, the nation, that they may be purified and welded one to another." To "weld the people one to another" is the project of "community," bringing the people back together (reconstructing Germany), fusing them into one symbiotic body.
Hitler projects the force of disintegration (the decomposition of the body politic) onto the Jew, and assumes that the Jew is acting to tear down, to destroy the German body. The Jew symbolized of that force working to tear down, destroy, decompose the German body, to make this body something that a German would not longer wish to "fuse" with.
The Jew represents disbelief in the immortality of the Reich, or put differently, belief that all bodies die; that disconnection (separation) from the omnipotent body politic is a possibility; that one cannot remain fused eternally, that one will someday die (separate from the principle of immortality and omnipotence contained within the idea of the nation). The Jew was conceived as a force working toward separating from the omnipotent body politic
Hitler wanted to create a German body that would never die, which would be immortal, "immune" from the forces of disintegration (the death instinct)--that which leads each and ever organism to its demise.
In Nazism, the idea is that the self and the nation cannot be torn apart; they are fused. The Jew is that force which works toward separateness, tearing apart self and nation, disintegrating the fusion fantasy, separating self from nation. The Jew is death because the Jew disintegrates the omnipotent symbiosis. The Jew symbolizes perception of separateness and separation; the reality of individuality and death.
Hitler projected the idea of self and experience of his own body into the nation. The projection of one's own body into the nation meant that the Jew was experienced as if within Hitler's body; as a defective, destructive force within his body. To maintain the life of one's body was to kill the Jew. The immunological meaning of Nazism is based on the fact that the Jew is experienced as if a disease within Hitler’s own body; so very close to his body.
Hitler's project is to create a people so uniform, so unified that it is possible for the people to fuse together (as if cells in a body) to create a gigantic, omnipotent organism (almost a metaphysical project). The people are "welded one to another" in the mass rallies to create a "body of the people." Hitler hopes to create a people so closely bound together, so fused, that no separation will be possible. The nation will never "disintegrate;" the symbiosis will never be destroyed; the nation will live forever.
“Our movement alone was capable of creating a national organism,” Hitler said. HItler described the Jew as he "demon of the disintegration of peoples," symbol of the "unceasing destruction of their lives." Hitler's fundamental mission was to save Germany from death: “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have achieved the greatest deed in the world.”
A defective child, mental patient or a Jew was conceived as a non-contributing cell within the body politic, a "parasite" within the nation; an entity that "fed off" the organism; did not work toward building up or constructing the organism.
The Nazis believed that a human being attained existence and value only insofar he or she contributed to the state. It followed that an individual who made no contribution to the state did not exist or, put differently, could be made not to exist.
The dream of oneness is the dream of the nation as a single "substance" with each individual constituting part of this substance. The Jew is a bacterium because he does not--cannot--fuse with the German substance. He is separate, not integrated within the body politic, alien to this body.
The leader grows out of the national substance and "represents" it. The connection between leader and led is organic, rooted in the fact that the leader is "one" with the substance of the people. The leader and the people fuse into one to constitute a single, unified substance. Hitler to the German youth: “You are flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood. You are all one, belonging to me.” This was Hitler’s fantasy: the nation as a single body consisting of the flesh of the German people constituting this body.
The mass rallies were the creation of the body of the nation: all followers constituted a massive body attached to Hitler's body: an omnipotent, gigantic "living organism" acting in accord with the will of Hitler, who "dictated" what was to be done.
Hitler's will arose out of the will of the people and represented the will of Germany. In submitting to Hitler, the people were submitting to their own will, submitting to the dream of the nation. The job of the leader was to "divine" or senses the will of the people, and to articulate their will for them.
The Nazi’s dream was the dream of the nation as a real organism; a "substance of flesh and blood." The Nazis dream that they are attached, connected to, fused with this organism; that they constitute it. The Nazi is united with the German organism and represents the substance of this organism.
Nazism meant the union of all Germans into the "mystical body of the state"--with Hitler as the head of the state. Each German was part of this living organism, and no individual could be separated from this organism. From HItler's perspective, the entirety of existence occurred within the framework of national (organic) life. It was impossible for a German to exist if he or she was disconnected or separate from this life.
