The Nazi dream of "unity" was rooted in a fantasy of the nation as a gigantic "body politic" consisting of the German people as the flesh and blood of this body. Margaret Mahler defined symbiosis (1969) as the fantasy of "somatopsychic omnipotent fusion:" delusion that two separate organisms are “contained within a common boundary.”
Nazism was the fantasy of "somatopsychic fusion:" the German people united together as if a single body or national organism. Nazi ideology recreated the experience of symbiosis in the individual's tie to his nation. The fantasy of fusion was enacted in mass rallies where tens-of-thousands of bodies massed together to create the illusion of a single body acting in unison. |
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Fusing into an Enthusiastic Mass
The idea of an omnipotent nation enhancing the power of the self—also denies the self. Hitler explained to his people, "You are nothing, your nation is everything." Nazi political theorist Reinhardt observed that
Hitler has set his stamp on the word folk-community (Volksgemeinschaft). This word is to make completely clear to the members of our people that the individual is nothing when not a member of a community.
The individual is nothing. Nazism was an orgy of nationalistic self-exaltation, but also an orgy of masochistic self-abnegation. According to Nazi ideology, human beings could attain to existence only through and in the nation.
Germany, for Hitler, meant bringing people together to create an omnipotent unity. Nazism was the quest for omnipotence through identification with the collective—leading to the adoption of a subservient, masochistic posture toward the state. The Nazi simultaneously is enhanced and diminished by his dream of symbiotic unity.
The dream of national unity, of course, is at the heart of many nationalist movements ("bringing people together," etc.). Hitler, however, was not content with an abstract version of unity. A unique aspect of Hitler’s Nazism was its quest to actualize the dream of national union—symbiosis— as bodily experience. Speaking to his youth, Hitler declared: “You are flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood. You are all one, belonging to me.” Hitler’s fantasy was the union of all Germans into a single “substance of flesh and blood.”
The mass-meeting and rallies expressed Hitler’s desire to create the physical experience of oneness—tens-of-thousands of human beings massed together, concentrated into a single space. Hitler described this experience:
The individual who at first feels lonely and easily succumbs to the fear of being alone—for the first time gets the picture of a larger community, which has a strengthening, encouraging effect. But the community of the great demonstration not only strengthens the individual, it also unites and helps to create an esprit de corps.
Man needs that strengthening which lies at the conviction of being a member and fighter in a great comprehensive body. And he obtains an impression of this body for the first time in the mass demonstrations. People came to my speeches as my enemies, but gradually it transpired that after my speech lasting three hours, adherents and adversaries fused into a single enthusiastic mass.
By virtue of Nazi rallies, Hitler explains, people become stronger by abandoning their autonomy and uniting with the group. But Hitler’s fantasy went deeper. The climax of his speeches occurred, he says, when listeners "fused into a single enthusiastic mass." At this moment, individuals united to become a "great comprehensive body."
Nazi architectural structures were designed to enhance this experience. Scobie writes in Hitler's State Architecture (1990) that Hitler's vast stadia and assembly halls were part of his plan to establish domination over masses of people by molding them into a single unified body enclosed within a single, all-embracing space.
Hitler's dream was to create--for himself and everyone--the experience of the German people as a single united body. The "masses" would become a mass of flesh.
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