Abstract: The parasite sucking Hitler’s blood and the blood of the German people was actually Germany--the nation itself--that required enormous sacrifices to maintain. The dream of immortality was the German nation, sucking the life out of one’s body. Jews symbolized this parasite within Hitler’s body: his own fantasy of immortality.

In nationalism, the body politic takes the place of one’s own body. The volk is a double of the self: the king’s second body. Totalitarianism means that everyone is contained within and constitutes this body politic. There is one Reich, one Fuhrer: all Germans exist in a state of fusion with this body. 

The totalitarian fantasy: nothing can exist separately from the omnipotent organism—its people are cells of an enormous body.

This idea originated with St. Paul’s idea of the church—many human beings united to constitute one body (the body of Christ). This fantasy is the foundation of Western political culture.

To identify with a body politic is to escape from one’s own body: to relocate the self into a new body. One abandons one’s frail human body in the name of identification with a body that seems immortal: that will "live on." Hitler's ideology grew out of his dream of an immortal (eternal) German Reich. 

One of the most common images in the rhetoric of Hitler and other Nazi ideologues is that of the "Jewish parasite." A “parasite” symbolizes the idea of a living entity that enter's one's own body--and consumes its resources. The parasite is an organism within one's own body that drains the life of the self.

The parasite symbolizes precisely the immortal object living within Hitler's body. The parasite is none other than Germany. It was Germany to which the German people sacrificed their own lives. It was Germany that was parasitic upon Hitler's body and bodies of other Germans.

What is parasitic is precisely the belief in immortality: attachment to the nation—causing one to sacrifice concrete existence with its pleasures.

The parasite sucking Hitler’s blood and the blood of the German people which the Nazis identified as the Jew--was actually Germany--the nation itself that required enormous sacrifices to maintain. The dream of immortality was the German nation, sucking the life out of one’s body. Jews symbolized this parasite within Hitler’s body: his own fantasy of immortality.

The sacrifice of concrete existence for the sake of devotion to an omnipotent object (the fantasy of immortality) is the source of suffering and the depletion of one's life-energy.  One needs to "feed the monster." The monster is one's own nation: the dream of immortality that is parasitic upon one's concrete existence.

The idea of a parasite draining one’s lifeblood is the other side of the coin of the omnipotent object to which one devotes one's life. The parasite is the negative of the omnipotent object: the dream of omnipotence in its destructive guise.

The Jew symbolized Germany in its negative guise: Germany as the source of destruction, which Hitler needed to disavow; to deny. Hitler had to kill or "kill off" his perception that his beloved Germany also was a force of destruction. Hitler, however, could not bear the idea of separation; could not bear to hear the voice telling him that his nation was destructive. “That no one can, no one must say to me.”

Hitler sacrificed concrete human beings to the idea of the German volk. This meant feeding the German nation with the blood of its soldiers and citizens. Jews symbolized resistance to the sacrificial wish; refusal to die for Germany. Thus Jews were as if deserters or traitors; "death to the non-believers."

The idea that devotion to one's nation is good--is a common one. This idea is "banal." By carrying this fantasy through to its logical extreme, the Nazis seemed psychotic.

Perhaps psychotic enactments revolving around entities we call "nations"--constitute the essence of modern history. These monumentally destructive acts are so common that we shy away from using the term psychotic. This would imply that psychosis constitutes the essence of the historical process.

We hesitate to say that the grotesque acts undertaken by the Nazis grew out of the most ordinary political discourse, “love of country.” Hitler declared: “We may be inhumane, but if we rescue Germany we have performed the greatest deed in the world.” Radical violence is justified when undertaken in the name of rescuing a sacred object.

There is a Disneyland dimension to our willingness to accept highly destructive form of political behavior as “normal.” People embrace and enjoy this normal destructiveness. Everyone wishes to believe that there is “something to kill and die for.”

Hitler articulated and enacted the central fantasy of nationalism: creation of an immortal body through elimination of the “enemy,” i.e., that which contradicts the fantasy of immortality. To awaken from the nightmare of history is to reveal the fantasy that is the source of nationalism and war. To awaken from the nightmare of history is to remove the body politic from within the self; to let go the parasite that has usurped one's body.