VII. The Final Solution as Denial of Death
Hitler’s project was to create a people so closely united—fused together—that they could think, feel and act as a single organism. Such a body politic would be indestructible, not only in the present, but in the future as well.
Hitler and the Nazis devoted their lives toward creating an organism that would be different from all other organisms. They aspired to fashion a body (politic) that was so healthy and powerful that it would not succumb to death.
The Jew in Hitler’s ideology was a force of disintegration. National Socialism was the attempt to come to terms with this destructive force. The “Final Solution” represented a form of radical surgery whose purpose was to remove or extirpate Germany’s death instinct.
Despite Hitler’s effort to create a perfectly healthy nation, Hitler’s own death instinct continually returned in the form of his belief that Germany was disintegrating. Hitler projected the struggle of “life against death” into the political arena and waged a furious battle to “maintain the body of the people.” He aspired to defeat death by embracing the idea of a body politic that could live forever.
The “Jew” represented Hitler’s experience and perception of his own death instinct: recognition or realization that all bodies die. In spite of Hitler’s struggle to deny death, he could not entirely repress the voice within that spoke the truth.
Still, Hitler refused to heed this inner voice reminding him that all bodies die. Rather, hearing this voice, Hitler became infuriated, enraged. To embrace the truth, Hitler would have had to acknowledge that his Nazi project had been in vain; that he had devoted his life to an illusion.
Therefore, in a climactic act of manic determination, Hitler initiated the Final Solution: a struggle to destroy death—the Jew—once and for all. Hitler insisted that Germany would not die; that the body politic would live on forever. Genocide represented Hitler’s final attempt to solve the problem of death by destroying Jews, who symbolized the death-instinct—the reality that all bodies eventually disintegrate.
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