HITLER'S "RACISM:" Jewish parasites within the German body

Hitler's "racism" has been misunderstood. We are not dealing with a simplistic "biological" conception. Rather, a close reading of Mein Kampf reveals a metaphysical conception. Hitler's idea begins with his fantasy of the German nation as an actual body, and Jews as parasitical organisms that invade national bodies.

Hitler claimed that the Jew always is a "parasite in the body of peoples." The Jew's spreading, he said, was a "typical phenomenon for all parasites;" The Jew always sought a "new feeding ground for his race." The Jew was the "typical parasite," a sponger who like a "noxious bacillus" keeps spreading "as long as a favorable medium invites him." The effect of the Jew's existence is that—wherever he appears—"the host people dies out."

Hitler's conception of the Jew was that of an organism that posed a threat to all nations. In Hitler's mind, however, it was Germany in particular was in danger of "succumbing" to this threat. Hitler perceived "forces of decay" that in "truly terrifying numbers" began to "brush up and down the body politic, eating like poisonous abscesses into the nation."

It seemed to Hitler as though a continuous "stream of poison was being driven into the outermost blood vessels of this once heroic body," inducing "progressively greater paralysis of sound reason and the instinct of self-preservation."

In these few passages from Mein Kampf, we discern the foundational idea that was the source of the Holocaust: the Jew was conceived by Hitler as a dangerous, parasitic organism that had invaded the body of the German nation, and was working toward its destruction. Unless checked, this parasite would cause the death of Germany. The Holocaust represented a "struggle" (Mein Kampf) to destroy Jewish parasites, lest they multiply and divide—and lead to the death of Germany.

Hitler's conception or ideology was a fantasy. Germany was not a body and Jews were not organisms who had invaded this body. Nevertheless, this fantasy led to the Holocaust. The central question is the meaning of this fantasy: why it resonated and "made sense" to so many people.

Hitler visualized the impact of the Jew upon Germany during the period of 1919-1923. He stated that the Jewish poison was able to "penetrate the blood stream of our people and to do its work." The state did not "possess the power to master the disease." In the laughable half-measures used against the poison, the "menacing decay" of the Reich was manifest.

The core of Hitler's "racism" was his fantasy that the German people were suffering as a result of being "contaminated" by Jewish blood. This poisonous contamination could be eliminated from the national body "only after centuries, or perhaps never." Racial decomposition was "debasing, in some cases even destroying," the "fundamental Aryan characteristics of our blood."

Hitler's fantasy articulated in Mein Kampf revolved around the "pestilential adulteration of German blood" by Jews. The idea was that Jewish organisms had entered into the bloodstream of the German nation, causing an infection.

The impact of the Jew, according to Hitler's Mein Kampf, was the effect that the Jewish people had upon the German character. The "pestilential adulteration" of the blood "systematically practiced by the Jew" was like a "drop of poison" that led to "spinelessness," burdening every future decision, become a "terrible lead weight," dragging the nation down into the "existence of a slave race."

The poison within the German blood stream led to a "lack of will power," preventing decisive action wherever risk had to be taken. Germany was like a "patient suffering from cancer who knows that death is certain if he does not undergo an operation." Given Germany's state of being, such a patient needs "no 51% probability of cure" before facing the operation. Rather, if the operation promised only half of one percent probability of success--a man of courage would risk it.

Richard Koenigsberg
rak@libraryofsocialscience.com