II. Defending the Body Politic Against the Force of Disintegration
At the heart of Hitler’s ideology and perception of reality lay his fantasy of Germany as an actual organism—a “real substance of flesh and blood.”
Reflecting on territorial settlements after the First World War, Hitler said that France was “tearing piece after piece out of the flesh of our national body.” He compared Germany’s loss of the Polish Corridor to a “strip of flesh cut from our body,” a national wound that “bleeds continuously and will continue to bleed till the land is returned to us.”
Hitler called economics a “living process,” one of the “functions of the body which is the people,” and stated that “so much blood had been drawn off Germany into economic life abroad that the circulation has been stopped.”
Hitler’s mission followed from his experience or perception of Germany as an actual body. The purpose of every idea and institution within a people, Hitler said, was to “maintain the substance of the people in bodily and mental health.”
One sought to preserve the “Body formed by the people” in the present—in order to “secure in the future the maintenance of this body which is the people.” Hitler’s ideology revolved around making certain that the German body politic could be perpetuated eternally, that it would “live on.”
What made Hitler’s project of “maintaining the body of the people” difficult was his belief that the German nation contained within a powerful force working toward its destruction. The Jew was identified as this force of destruction operating within the German body politic: a “ferment of decomposition among people” working to “disintegrate” the body politic. Whereas most peoples or races act to build up societies and nations, Hitler declared that the Jewish class constituted a “dissolver of human culture.”
Hitler’s career focused on his struggle to come to terms with the force of disintegration he imagined was working within the German body politic. His Nazi movement revolved around building up the nation: improving the health of the body politic and unifying the people so that Germany would never again “capitulate before the ferments of disintegration.” The goal of National Socialism was to maintain the life of Germany—by rescuing her from death.
To put a stop to the process of disintegration, Hitler said, it was essential to establish a “clear and clean separation between the two races.” A clear line of demarcation between the healthy, constructive German people, on the one hand, and the sick, destructive Jewish race, on the other, would amount to an “immunization of the German Reich against all disintegrating tendencies.” A nation with a powerful immune system would ward off elements that threatened the life of the body politic.
As the Nazi movement took hold and Germany recovered her health and strength—Hitler affirmed his determination to protect his achievement. In the future, he insisted, no one would be able to “shatter or tear asunder” the rejuvenated Reich. The Nazi Movement would leave behind a German body politic "completely renewed internally, "intolerant of anyone who sinned against the nation, and pitiless toward anyone who would attempt once more to “destroy or disintegrate this body politic.”
For Hitler, politics constituted a struggle of “life against death:” a battle between the healthy German nation on the one hand, and Jews on the other--who represented the “demon of the disintegration of peoples, symbol of the unceasing destruction of their life.” By asserting the “national creative will over against the conception of international disintegration,” Hitler believed Germany could survive the threat posed by Judaism.
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