Hitler's Ideology

(Originally published as: Hitler's Ideology: A Study in Psychoanalytic Sociology)Why did Hitler initiate the Final Solution and take Germany to war? Based on analysis of Hitler's rhetoric-the words, images and metaphors contained within his writing and speeches-Koenigsberg's study reveals the "e;hidden narratives"e; that were the source of Hitler's ideology and the Holocaust.Koenigsberg's book was the first to study political rhetoric from the perspective of embodied metaphor. Conceiving of the Jew as a "e;force of disintegration,"e; parasite, and as a bacteria within the German body politic, the Final Solution represented a struggle to destroy the source of Germany's disease-and thereby to save the nation.Hitler often is thought of as an anomaly. Koenigsberg's classic study demonstrates that Hitler acted based on the conventional ideology of nationalism: devotion to one's nation and a desire to destroy its enemies; willingness to die and kill-to sacrifice lives-in the name of a sacred object.Hitler's actions-the history he created-followed as a logical consequence of the ideology that he promoted. Hitler imagined that by destroying the Jewish disease-source of death-Germany might live forever. The Final Solution grew out of a fantasy about an immortal body (politic).