Hitler’s view of the “Aryan” was not what many people imagine. What was “most strongly developed in the Aryan,” Hitler wrote in Mein Kampf, was his willingness to sacrifice himself for the community: to “give one’s personal labor and if necessary one’s life for others.”
The Aryan was “not greatest in his mental qualities,” but in the extent of his willingness to “put all his abilities in the service of the community.” The Aryan “willingly subordinates his own ego to the life of the community and, if the hour demands, even sacrifices it.” The “superiority” of the Aryan race grew out of the capacity of the Aryan to sacrifice his own life for the sake of the community.
The idea that one should sacrifice one’s own life for the sake of one’s community or nation was the bedrock of Nazi ideology: the anlage out of which everything else grew. Nazism meant absolute devotion to Germany: willingness to die for one’s country. Hitler’s “will” revolved around actualizing this ideology—bringing it into being.
Nationalism, Hitler believed, meant acting with a “boundless and all-embracing love for the people,” and, if necessary, dying for it. A man proves his love for his people “solely by the sacrifices he is prepared to make for it.” Giving one’s life for the community constituted the “crown of sacrifice.”
Military service meant consciousness of the duty to fight for the existence of the German people by “sacrificing the life of the individual, always and forever, at all times and all places.” To be a Nazi, in short, was to be endlessly, eternally willing to die for Germany.
Hitler was deeply disturbed by Germany’s loss of the First World War (or, rather, by her surrender). On the other hand, he idealized the death of the German soldier in battle. The young regiments went to death in Flanders, Hitler wrote , crying Deutschland ueber Alles in der Welt (Germany above everything in the world). With “fatherland love in our heart and songs on our lips,” Hitler’s regiment had “gone into battle as to a dance.”
More than once, Hitler said, thousands of young Germans had stepped forward to “sacrifice their young lives freely and joyfully on the altar of the beloved fatherland.” Having died in battle, the best comrades—“still almost children”—slumbered in the sacred ground having “run to their death with gleaming eyes for the one true fatherland.”
Nazism was an ideology of sacrificial death. To be a Nazi was to be willing “to die for Germany” (the title of a book by Jay Baird). “Obedience to authority” does not convey the meaning of Nazism. Rather, the willingness to submit and to sacrifice one’s life grew out of faith: love for one’s country and loyalty to Adolf Hitler, who was conceived as the perfect embodiment of Germany.
When a boy entered the Hitler Youth at age 10, he swore to devote all his energies and strength to Adolf Hitler, vowing that he was “willing and ready to give up my life for him.” The Wehrmacht soldier swore by a sacred oath that he would render “unconditional obedience” to Hitler, willing at all times to “give my life for this oath.” And the SS-man famously vowed “obedience unto death.”
Nazism was a cult of sacrificial death. Willingness to die for Germany constituted the core of Nazi ideology. “Obedience unto death” was the fount of morality: a vow to surrender one’s life when Adolf Hitler asked one to.
Hitler explained to his people, “You are nothing, your nation is everything.” Nazism was the will to nothingness: negation of the self in the name of glorifying one’s nation. Sacrificial death was the highest ideal. Dying for Germany was the summum bonum: the end in itself (at the same time containing all other goods).
Warfare constituted a vast arena giving Germany the opportunity to sacrifice young men. When the war against Russia began, German General Gerd von Rundstedt admonished the soldier of the Second World War to emulate his brothers of the First World War and to “die in the same way”: strong, unswerving and obedient, going “happily and as a matter of course to his death” (cited in Baird, 1975). Goebbels was satisfied that German soldiers went into battle “with devotion, like congregations going into service.”
There are two queer of color theoretical frames that could be employed to expand this blog. The first is called Necropolitics and was articulated by Achille Mbembe. Necropolitical theory argues that violence (war) is about who can kill (Nazi state) and who is killable (Aryan soldiers). According to Mbembe, the literal killing (or death) of the subject is not the primary intended outcome, rather, it is the symbolism (sacrifice for the community) that most greatly enhances state power.
The second theorist and theory that aids this argument is Roberto Esposito, a cultural theorist, who argues that the only ‘community’ that exists is the community of existence. In other words, all we have in common is our mutual existence. Esposito argues that despite the fact that community is necessary, it is impossible to realize because the community turns on its self to protect its self. Esposito calls this immunity and autoimmunity. Immunity in this instance would be the attempt of the Nazi’s to protect the Aryan nation (community) by exposing (vaccinating) its members (Aryan soldiers) to non-Aryan forces (the virus). In this frame the death of Aryan soldiers in protection of the Aryan nation immunizes the Nazi government from non-Aryan (viral) attack. Autoimmunity, then, would occur is the Aryan soldier (device of immunization) turned on the Nazi government (can be read as the body).
The “community” is a fantasy that exists in the mind of each human being: “Society” as a mental representation: the omnipotent object bound to the self.
And yes, the omnipotent fantasy can kill the individual. One must defend oneself against one’s own fantasy.
The “Jewish parasite” was Germany: the omnipotent object bound to the self. Genocide was an immunological fantasy: killing the imaginary object bound to the self.