Hitler's ideology was a radical form of nationalism revolving around the fantasy that of the German body politic was in a state of disintegration. Hitler identified profoundly with Germany, thus experienced Germany's disintegration as the disintegration of himself. Hitler did not separate political ideas from his inner state of being. He articulated his inner state of being through his ideology.

What is this ideology of nationalism, still so powerful that we barely recognize it as an ideology? The ideology is expressed in a song, America the Beautiful: "Oh, beautiful for spacious skies, for amber waves of grain, for purple mountain majesty above the fruited plain!" 

Nationalism articulates the quest for narcissistic omnipotence. The ego of the nationalist expands by imagining it is fused with a vast geographical territory; the entire "space" of national life.

Nationalism suggests that the entirety of one's country—it's history, people and accomplishments—are contained within the self, implying the absence of a boundary between self and nation Self and nation are inextricably bound. To be a "man without a country" seems inconceivable.

If the ego's wish for narcissistic expansion is projected into the idea of one's nation, so is the ego's vulnerability and tendency toward fragmentation. Hitler externalized his own anxiety into the idea of Germany, believing his nation was in danger of disintegrating. He experienced the idea of death (his own death) as a perception that the German body politic--with which he identified his own body—was falling apart.

Language shapes the mind and structures thought, but also is thea vehicle for externalizing mind and thought. Each of us possesses a force of disintegration operating within. Each of us is in the process of disintegrating, moving toward our demise. Hitler experienced the idea of death in the form of a belief that Germany was disintegrating. The Nazi project was to overcome death by killing Jews, who symbolized the internal force of disintegration. Beyond the "quest for living space" and all other geopolitical aims, Hitler's fundamental project was to overcome death by creating a German body politic that could live forever.

One-way human beings deal with the issue of mortality is through the creation of nations or "omnipotent bodies politic," entities that seem to exist in a dimension separate from organic existence. We project the idea of our small, frail bodies into the idea of these imaginary, omnipotent bodies, imagining we will "live on" contained within these immortal bodies.

Hitler’s ideology was the denial of death, suggesting that the bodies of individual Germans could fuse into one to create a single, immortal body. In Hitler's fantasy, the German people were united, massed together as cells of an organism to create an indestructible body that could live forever. In this typical nationalist fantasy, the country or body politic is imagined as an entity that exists above and beyond the lives or bodies of individuals.

In spite of his effort to embrace Germany as "vesture for the eternal" (Fichte), Hitler's experience of the reality of death continued to return in the form of a perception that the national body was disintegrating or decomposing. Hitler projected this experience of death into the idea of the Jew. The German body politic could become immortal if it were not for the Jewish death instinct operating within.

The purpose of Nazi ideology was to split off the idea of death and locate it in a symbolic representation, the Jew. Hitler and the committed themselves to a struggle against death, a struggle that took the form of an effort to "kill off" the symbolic object into which the idea of death had been projected. If only the Jew could be eliminated, Germany would live forever.

The Holocaust was a struggle to defeat death. The idea that bodies become diseased, and die was projected into the Jew. Hitler committed himself to a monumental (futile) "struggle" (Mein Kampf) taking the form of attempting to "kill off" death. Hitler aspired to destroy that symbolic entity (the Jew) into which the idea of death had been projected.