RETURN TO THE MOTHER (COUNTRY):
Making Conscious the Unconscious in Social Reality

Richard Koenigsberg

Images and metaphors in Hitler’s writings and speeches reveal a regressive desire for union with the mother as the source of his ideology. Through the vehicle of his ideology, Hitler played out in the political arena his experiences, fantasies and conflicts surrounding union and separateness. Projecting the trauma of separation into political units, he insisted that Austria “did not want to be separated from the Reich.” Only one who had felt in his own skin what it meant to be German, Hitler said, could measure the "deep longing that burns at all times in the heart of children separated from their mother-country.”

The pain of separation elicited within Hitler the desire to abolish this pain by returning to that from which he had been separated. Hitler transferred his fantasy of reunion—the restoration of narcissistic omnipotence—into his political ideology. He projected the drama of union and separation—of separation and reunion—into the symbolic domain of politics, and enacted this drama on the stage of history.

Although Germany had been defeated in the First World War in 1918 and was in a sorry state, Austria nevertheless desired to “return to the Reich forthwith.” Hitler addressed himself to those who—detached from their mother country—“now, with poignant emotion, long for the hour which will permit them to return to the heart of their faithful mother.”

Hitler sought to annul the trauma of separation by enacting the fantasy of symbiotic union in relationship to political entities. Austria—once part of Germany—subsequently had separated from her. Hitler declared that separation was intolerable: Austria and Germany could not remain separate. He insisted that Austria return to the mother (country).

It would appear that the ideology espoused by Hitler—revolving around the union of Austria and Germany—derived from the fantasy contained within it. Further, this fantasy provided the fuel or psychic energy driving Hitler’s political agenda. Hitler’s ideology allowed him to share his fantasies with others, becoming the modus operandi for political action and the creation of history.