The nation’s body: disability and deviance in the writings of Adolf Hitler

Abstract

This article takes its starting point in the Nazi ideology as it appears in the writings of Adolf Hitler, and discusses how disability and the body can be understood in the context of Mein Kampf. The article underlines how disability and bodily infirmities, alongside race, featured significantly in Hitler’s demagogic message. Although the overall image of disability was related to a sense of threat – and a culture gone wrong – Mein Kampf also contains a mixed interpretation of disability as a phenomenon, in which different and opposing disability narratives took part in the construction and the image of the body as a national property.

Keywords:

• Disability
• Nazism
• normalcy
• deviance
• biopower

Points of interest

•	This study discusses the Nazi ideology and its rhetoric in relation to the body and disability.
•	The article is among the few to analyze Hitler’s ideas and recommendations concerning people with disability.
•	Results illustrate how cultural–historical analyses of ideas, values and norms can help to show that disability as a phenomenon can be explained and valued in different ways and that the line between inclusion and exclusion is not always clear.
•	This type of research is vital since it contributes to an ethical reflection on how we look upon and understand human dignity, disability and peoples’ right to be included in society.
•	This research provides an opportunity to critically reflect on how different societies, at different times and in different ways, socially construct the notions of ability and disability, especially in relationship to national interests.

Introduction

The medical model of disability has increasingly been challenged by a social model that defines disability as the outcome of social barriers and oppression (Oliver and Barnes 1998). Even though the model has made significant contributions in putting disability in relation to the organization of society in general it has also been criticized for being too generalizing, and downplaying not only the body, but also cultural dimensions (Borsay 2002; Shakespeare 2006; Thomas 2002). Reasoning from the perspective of critical realism, Bhaskar and Danermark (2006) stress that the field of disability research should avoid reductionism, since disability appears on different levels with various mechanisms at play. In parallel, Shakespeare (2006, 58) argues for an interactional approach in which disability is ‘the outcome of the interaction between individual contextual factors – which includes impairment, personality, individual attitudes, environment, policy and culture’. Thus, the interactional model, according to Shakespeare (2006), gives more attention to disability as a multi-dimensional phenomenon that can be observed and understood on various levels. One way to learn more about disability as a phenomenon is thus to analyze ideas and narratives concerning the body in relation to a cultural context (Whyte and Ingstad 1995; Grech 2012). By focusing on multilayered discourses, ideas and values, cultural analyses strengthen the field of critical disability studies (Goodley, Hughes, and Davis 2012; Meekosha 2006). As Grech (2012, 58) points out, ‘any attempt to understand what disability means in specific spaces involves first engaging with what is valued in these same social, political, economic, cultural and ontological locations’. An entrance to this is to analyze biopower from a historical perspective – biopower being ‘a technology emerging in the late eighteenth century for managing populations by surveillance and record keeping of births, deaths, reproduction and dysfunction’ (Blackmore and Hodgkins 2012, 75; cf. Goodley 2014). Simultaneously, as stated by Borsay (2002, 98), ‘[h]istory is a missing piece of the jigsaw in disability studies’. For Barnes (1996, 56–57), the historical dimension is crucial for demonstrating social responses to people with disabilities, in which a ‘cultural bias against people with impairments’ in western society stands out (see also Hughes 2012).

One way to discuss how cultural factors interplay with the interpretation of disability is to analyze ideological systems. Following that line, this article takes its starting point in Nazism and Hitler’s Mein Kampf, which is ’the basis of all Nazi propaganda’ (McGuire 1977, 1) – a work that continues to influence right-wing circles (Bhopal 2005). The article’s ambition is to illustrate how political ideas and ideologies help shape the perception and understanding of disability in relation to a sociocultural context. Hitler’s ideological reasoning of disability took place in the social and political turmoil of the Weimar Republic with an institutional system that covered, for instance, special schooling for children with disabilities and asylums for people with mental conditions. Still, as reported by Poore (2007), most people with disabilities in Germany lived outside institutions, where those who could not provide for themselves were mainly left to charity. The First World War changed the premises and created a great number of disabled German veterans that ‘seemed to have an unquestionably legitimate claim to the moral and financial support necessary for reintegrating them into society’ (2007, 3). According to Cohen (2001), disabled veterans came to symbolize the ‘burdens’ of the war and people with disabilities claimed their rights accordingly. Even though the German state had, in comparison, a more generous social policy toward this group (e.g. pensions), many war victims felt neglected by the public and ‘turned to extremist politics’ (2001, 2–3).

Simultaneously, disability was evident as a threat in the practical politics of the Nazis; but ideas that people with disabilities posed a problem did not start with the Nazi regime. For instance, as outlined by Mostert (2002), inmates in German psychiatric asylums experienced hard times even before the establishment of the Nazi regime. In parallel to this, Social Darwinist ideas – suggesting that both biological and social traits were ‘genetically determined’ (2002, 158) – gained ground in the nineteenth-century western world. In relation to this, Snyder and Mitchell (2006) conclude, eugenics was part of a transnational ideology. The aim of eugenics, or racial hygiene, was to improve the quality of future generations (for example, Benedict, Shields, and O’Donell 2009; Gittelman 2006; Grue 2010). ‘From the end of the eighteenth century to the conclusion of World War II’, Snyder and Mitchell (2006, 101) report, ‘bodies designated as defective became the focal point of European and American efforts to engineer a “healthy” body politic’. As argued by Barnes (1996, 56), Social Darwinism and the eugenics movement were related to ‘the age-old myth’ that people with disabilities posed a threat to society. Thus, increased eugenic control soon entailed institutionalization, involuntary sterilization and marriage regulations (Benedict, Shields, and O’Donell 2009; Mostert 2002; O’Brien 2011).

In the Third Reich, negative eugenics were developed even further and turned into large-scale euthanasia operations which were intended ‘to “free” Germany of disabled people’ (Barney and Dalton 2006; Grue 2010, 33). Accordingly, children in Nazi Germany were only valued ‘if they were considered racially desirable, free from disease or disability, and only if they could contribute to society’ (Benedict, Shields, and O’Donell 2009, 512). Later, the so-called T4 program expanded to include even adults. As stated by Poore (2007, 87), people with disabilities were ‘the first group of victims to be systematically gassed by the Nazi regime’. In the 1930s and 1940s, ‘the Nazi party murdered over 200 000 disabled people’¹ (Oliver and Barnes 1998, 34; Poore 2007). According to Nazi ideology, provision of treatment for the mentally and physically disabled ‘weakened the race or nation and expended on the weak resources that could be used for other national interests’ (Gittelman 2006, 8). But, as noted by Grue (2010, 38), the euthanasia program was also motivated by human considerations as a way to ‘free patients from their sufferings’ (see also Benedict, Shields, and O’Donell 2009). In line with this, Snyder and Mitchell (2006, 122) stress that the German eugenic was motivated by both ‘alleviation of “suffering”’ and ‘a lessening of institutionalization as a burden upon the national economy’. As pointed out by Poore (2007), there was, due to the socioeconomic crisis, a broad political support behind eugenic policies in the Weimar Republic. In all, Keys (2009, 395) argues, ‘a central goal’ of the Nazi project, following the Weimar period, was the ‘[s]haping of a new subject’ that was to be ‘an active, willing and worthy participant of the new society’. In this, Snyder and Mitchell (2006, 129) see a link between race and disability in the sense that ‘Eugenic Atlantic produced racial and disability doctrines premised on a uniquely modern utopian fantasy of a future world uncontaminated by defective bodies’. A crucial element in the Nazi ideology and propaganda was the idea that the German nation and its people were under attack (Gittelman 2006). In this, O’Brien (2011, 349) states, ‘both Jews and the “carriers of inferior genetic material” were viewed by state physicians as imminent threats’. Mostert (2002) and Poore (2007) underline how this was accentuated in the propaganda exposed in German art and literature, in which images of people with disabilities were both put in the service of antimilitarism, and at the same time used by the Nazis to mobilize the Germans.

There is a significant body of research concerning the Nazi ideology as such, and previous research has approached Mein Kampf from different perspectives. Cariola (2014) analyzed Hitler’s psychological functioning and dynamics in which Hitler’s concern with Germany’s security and ethnic division is related to compensatory functions, victimization and a vulnerable self-image. The text of Mein Kampf has also been used in order to understand the rhetorical structure of Hitler’s message. According to Mc Kay, Hill, and Buckler (1996, 1069), the ‘basic themes’ of Mein Kampf were the concepts of race, anti-Semitism, living space and the leader-dictator. McInnis (1985, 15) spells out that Mein Kampf entails the notion that ‘Germans must be racially pure, superior Aryan people’ and that they have ‘a duty to increase its numbers, so that it can fulfill its destiny of world supremacy’. According to McGuire (1977, 12–13), Mein Kampf should be understood as an encyclopedic myth that is constructed upon a dialectical tension revolving around specific themes, that rests upon a weltanschauung [world view] rather than events: ‘The basic contradiction which Hitler’s myth mediates is the contradiction between life and death, which is associated by pairing with the contradiction between good and evil.’ The mission of the Nazi party is divinely sanctioned and ‘stand for […] the good of the people’, while ‘Jew-Marxism stand for decrease in German culture and, therefore, the German people’ (1977, 12–13). In this tension, McGuire (1977) argues, Hitler emerges as a prophet. This analysis resembles Musolff’s (2007) scrutiny of Mein Kampf and the role of metaphors in relation to racial prejudice and anti-Semitic imagery, in which Mein Kampf constructs the image of the German nation as an organic human body that must be maintained, and where the Jew is presented as an ‘illness-spreading parasite’ (2007, 25; original emphasis). Hitler not only gives the diagnosis but elaborates on an illness-cure scenario, in which the Nazi ideology represents its cure. In this, Hitler appears as the healer addressing the underlying cause of the threat and how to respond accordingly. Other linguistic analyses suggest that Hitler’s propaganda had both a religious and a medical character that identified the Jew as the enemy. In this way, Cariola (2014, 321) suggests, the Germans represented the ‘healthy “self”’ in contrast to ‘the ill “other”’.

Simultaneously, only a limited amount of research has focused exclusively on disability and the body in relation to Hitler’s Mein Kampf. Bhopal (2005) underlines how Mein Kampf also introduced the idea of a superior society, subsequently warned of degeneration and emphasized the need for eugenic measures. As a consequence, McInnis (1985, 15) argues, Mein Kampf is a call for the state ‘to impose birth control, so that diseased or weak people cannot reproduce’). As outlined by Benedict, Shields, and O’Donell (2009, 514), Mein Kampf contains Hitler’s idea that people with disabilities should be removed from society to ‘preserve the purity of the Volk and to remove “useless feeders” who were a burden on society’. In line with this, Poore (2007, 86) notes how Mein Kampf contains a vocabulary that expresses Hitler’s ‘hatred of disabled people’. According to O’Brien (2011, 348), Hitler’s own interest in the body and eugenics, as an ‘integral component of his overall scheme of race hygiene’, is present in the pages of Mein Kampf (see also Keys 2009).

The aim of this article is to further discuss Hitler’s Mein Kampf regarding the issue of disability and the body in relation to perceptions of normalcy and deviance. The overall question guiding the analysis is as follows: how does Hitler depict and value disability and the body in relation to the overall Nazi ideology, and how are the proposed interventions motivated?

Analytical frame

This study focuses on cultural mechanisms in terms of ideological values, beliefs and norms; and seeks to examine Hitler’s notions regarding normalcy and deviance, in which interpretations and the meaning of disability are seen in the light of the sociocultural contexts. In this approach, then, the meanings of normalcy and deviance are not fixed but movable interpretations made by various agents. Concurrently, Goodley (2014) argues, biopower can be a useful instrument to identify practices and ideas that regulate life. The concept focuses on the ‘making of individuals’ (2014, 60), and involves three practices. Firstly, it rests on truth claims concerning human characteristics. Secondly, it entails ‘strategies for intervention upon collective existence in the name of life and health’. Thirdly, biopower refers to ‘modes of subjectification’ in the sense that individuals ‘are brought to work on themselves […] in relation to truth discourses’ (2014, 61). Following Goodley’s (2014, 62) reasoning, the ‘human being is constituted through a complex array of material and discursive formations’, in which the notion of the societal body becomes critical. Thus, to make sense of normalcy and deviance in relation to ideological texts such as Mein Kampf is to analyze the meaning of those concepts and the kind of narratives being constructed concerning the other. In this, ‘disability functions as a narrative prosthesis – a prop on which to lean and emphasize the preference for ability’ (2014, 118) – which also highlights ‘how significant binary opposites are constituted through social, cultural and economic practices in relation to one another’ (58).

The analysis has been conducted using the two volumes of Mein Kampf translated into English by Ralph Manheim; a version considered valid by the research community (for example, Bhopal 2005; Cariola 2014; Watt 1992).² One should also keep in mind that Mein Kampf is an ideological and rhetorical instrument, with many of its statements being ‘demonstrably untrue’ (Watt 1992, xi). The first volume was produced³ during Hitler’s imprisonment in Landsberg am Lech where he had ended up after the failed putsch in Munich, and the second volume was written after his release. The text was thus compiled in the ongoing political turmoil of Germany following the First World War. The volumes were written mainly in the form of an autobiography with comments on ‘the political circumstances through which its author lived and the lessons he drew from them’ (1992, xxix).

The coding process has been guided by a thematic approach in relation to the overall research question (Taylor and Bogdan 1998). In the first phase, Mein Kampf was read in its entirety with the aim of gaining familiarity with the text and making initial notes. In the second phase, coding was done on units of specific meaning, such as passages dealing with eugenics issues. Units with common traits were, by comparison, in the third phase coded into similar categories demonstrating more abstract themes and subthemes. The coding was an attempt to identify passages that involved truth claims, interventions and modes (see earlier) in relation to the body. Simultaneously, the analysis process was not entirely inductive. In reality, the construction of analytical themes is always interlaced with preconceptions and theoretical links, which in this case concerned both previous research and the concepts of normalcy and deviance in relation to biopower.

Findings

The homogeneous man

The idea of the strong and coherent nation appears as the crucial hub of the narrative that Hitler constructed in Mein Kampf, a notion that was placed within a historical framework which underlined the importance of the German nation as a superior culture. The German race is, Hitler (1992, 263) stressed, ‘the founder of all higher humanity […] representing the prototype of all that we understand by the word “man”’, which turned the German ideal into a template that other people, and bodies, could be tested against. Concurrently, this idea had important implications from a disability perspective. One important dimension in the rhetoric of Hitler was the image of a nation in bodily decay, which can be linked to the leitmotif of Social Darwinism and its idea of a threatening degeneration. A recurrent theme in Mein Kampf is Hitler’s attempt to convince the reader not only of the validity of the degeneration theory – and its underlying threat to the German people – but also that any measures which did not coincide with the principal of the survival of the fittest was against nature, or as Hitler stated:

For as soon as procreation as such is limited and the number of births diminished, the natural struggle for existence which leaves only the strongest and healthiest alive is obviously replaced by the obvious desire to ‘save’ even the weakest and most sickly at any price, and this plants the seed of a future generation which must inevitably grow more and more deplorable the longer this mockery of Nature and her will continues […]. A stronger race will drive out the weak, for the vital urge in its ultimate form will, time and again, burst all the absurd fetters of the so-called humanity of individuals, in order to replace it by the humanity of Nature which destroys the weak to give his place to the strong [–]. Nature must help again and make a choice among those whom she has chosen for life. (Hitler 1992, 121–123)

In other words, the strong national body grew from continual improvement, making the perfect body a vital feature of the Nazi project. Snyder and Mitchell (2006, 111) place eugenics within the framework of a ‘utopian social vision’ in relation to modernity that entailed notions of ‘perfected homogeneous communities’. This is clearly the case in Mein Kampf, in which body functions and perfection were even outlined as prerequisites for a citizen to experience pride and national belonging:

Only when a nation is healthy in all its members, in body and soul, can every man’s joy in belonging to it rightfully be magnified to that high sentiment which we designate as national pride. (Hitler 1992, 388)

According to Hitler, the ability to be active and strong was a prerequisite for achieving value as a human being. ‘[T]hose who do not want to fight in this world of eternal struggle, Hitler (1992, 262) concluded, ‘do not deserve to live’. For him, there was a clear line between the strong and the weak. People with congenital disabilities therefore became a threat to the strong nation, which in turn signaled dimensions of power and oppression since ‘force alone forever masters weakness’ (1992, 223).

Behind this ideology one can also imagine Hitler’s quest for symmetry in the sense that the German nation was to combat any deviance in the population that conflicted with his idea of an ideal and homogeneous man. The strong nation was one of unity, where any form of deviance was presented as a threat. For instance, to depart from Hitler’s bodily template moved man closer to animals, or as was outlined in relation to marriage regulations:

A folkish state must therefore begin by raising marriage from the level of a continuous defilement of the race, and give it the consecration of an institution which is called upon to produce images of the Lord and not monstrosities halfway between man and ape. (Hitler 1992, 365–366)

This passion for symmetry touched other areas, such as when Hitler furiously attacked the new form of art that challenged traditional forms, turning it into a hallmark of cultural decadence (for example, Hitler 1992, 235). What is also worth noticing is that Hitler’s view on art can be seen in the light of an ongoing struggle in postwar Germany in which art, demonstrating disability and war victims, became part of an antimilitarist opposition (Poore 2007). Hitler’s view on art, however, was a part of his quest for normalcy and power, something that was consistent with his overall aversion against any kind of deviance; as when he described his reaction to seeing a Jew in the street wearing ‘a black caftan and black hair locks’. ‘I observed the man furtively and cautiously’, Hitler (1992, 52) reported, ‘but the longer I stared at this foreign face […] the more my first question [Is this a Jew?] assumed a new form: Is this a German?’ Even members of the parliament could be rejected by Hitler because of the way they spoke (1992, 71). Thus, both cultural and body features coincided in his construction of the other. In Hitler’s world, external attributes and appearances became important markers that threatened his idea of unity. Following Goodley’s (2014) outlined concept of biopower, the ideal of the homogeneous man and nation – and human diversity as a sign of weakness – thus becomes an overall truth claim and a fundamental prerequisite embedded in Hitler’s message, a platform on which necessary action plans would later be built.

The state’s duty and changing society

Accordingly, it was the duty of the state to counteract this threat against the strong and capable body, something considered impossible given the political landscape. In ‘this brave, bourgeois-national society’, Hitler (1992, 366) ironically complained, ‘the prevention of the procreative faculty in […] cripples, and cretins is a crime’. In contrast, Hitler saw mankind as engaged in an ongoing racial competition in which success depended upon biological dispositions. ‘[T]he race which cannot stand the test’, he wrote, ‘will simply die out, making place for healthier or tougher and more resisting races’ (1992, 226). Following this reasoning, the main duty of the state was therefore to preserve and develop a common functional body that consisted of ‘physically and psychically homogeneous creatures’ (1992, 357). This philosophy laid the foundation for recommendations and interventions which stressed the need for eugenics. Later Hitler would even proclaim that the law of sterilization was ‘part of the biological “foundation” of national socialism’ (Poore 2007, 77). That kind of policy was accentuated based on the presumption that a person with a disability was unhappy. To combat the prevalence of disability and misery was thus also motivated by arguments of compassion. ‘Those who are physically and mentally unhealthy and unworthy’, Hitler (1992, 367) made clear, ‘must not perpetuate their suffering in the body of their children’. In parallel to this, Hitler advocated restrictions on citizenship based not only on racial premises but also on physical disposition. ‘But not only do they [the authorities] not concern themselves with the race of such a new citizen’, he complained, ‘they do not even pay any attention to his physical health’ (1992, 400, see also 376).

Concurrently, this kind of threat was put in relation to a society in transition ˗ such as the increased competition between nations. Even though Hitler (1992, 137) spoke about ‘the victorious march of German technology and industry’, he also identified the modern society as a menace to the national body, in which demographic patterns observed by Hitler were interlaced with ideas concerning the body. According to Hitler, new technology coupled with freedom to move about laid the foundation for a weaker and more divided state, as when talking about migration:

[E]xperience shows that all those elements which emigrate consist of the healthiest and most energetic natures, rather than conversely. Yet among these ‘emigrants’ we must count, not only those who go to America, but to an equal degree the young farmhand who resolves to leave his native village for the strange city. He, too, is prepared to face an uncertain fate. (1992, 24)

These words illuminate an idea that disability and weak bodies were relatively growing phenomena, and that the German nation was, by contrast, being drained of strong citizens. In other words, Hitler depicted a dystopian vision in which the nation became physically weaker. This in turn suggests important premises lurking behind Hitler’s reasoning, which depicted people with disabilities as less eager to follow their own wishes or having the capacity to perform activities (e.g. migrate). According to Snyder and Mitchell (2006, 122), the Nazi regime saw people with disabilities ‘as parasites upon the German state due to their apparent lack of utility as laborers’. Hitler’s narrative in Mein Kampf nourished that attitude since it promoted categorization based on biological features. Against the strong and dynamic, Hitler placed the weak and static. Given that narrative, disability emerged as yet another factor which could have negative consequences in the ongoing international power struggle. But, as outlined by Snyder and Mitchell (2006, 91), the German eugenicists were obviously inspired by ideas and practices that had already gained ground in, for instance, the USA (e.g. sterilization laws), with the aim to erase disabled citizens from ‘public view’. These international links are also present in Mein Kampf, where Hitler was even willing to commend the USA for their policy of ‘refusing immigration on principle to elements in poor health’ (1992, 400). Consequently, Mein Kampf entails recommendations for the German nation in which health status and body function should be assessed and used as a prerequisite for citizenship and rights (for example, 1992, 401).

In sum, Hitler used Mein Kampf to make truth claims based on the notion that the German is an existing superior biological organism with extraordinary bodily capacities. A subsequent truth claim was that this organism was under attack from inferior bodies. Disability was thus embedded within ongoing societal changes, in which disability appeared as a weakness in the ongoing competition with other nations. To diminish this threat, strategies for intervention comprised actions that were supposed to regulate biological reproduction. All of this put pressure on the members of society to contribute to the construction of a uniform citizen and type of man that not only held specific racial features but also enhanced Hitler’s quest for symmetry, homogeneity and bodily normality.

Collective strength and beauty

Not only did Hitler declaim his idea of bodily normality in relation to the threat of degeneration; what also emerged in his writing was the notion of the necessary capacities that a normal citizen in his ideal state should possess, such as the ability to understand history and the overarching weltanschauung from which other concepts derived, such as nation or people (for example, Hitler 1992, 382). Thereby, Hitler stressed the ability to think abstractly. In this, Hitler (1992, 33) made a distinction between a shallow, instrumental reading and a more profound kind of understanding that would ‘help to fill the framework constituted by every man’s talent and abilities […]’. He also used himself as an example of someone who possessed the necessary bodily qualities, stating that: ‘since my earliest youth I have endeavored to read in the correct way, and in this endeavour I have been most happily supported by my memory and intelligence’ (1992, 34). The celebration of mental capacities was also in line with a general downgrading of people with mental disabilities in Germany. For instance, as noted by Poore (2007), national surveys of that time showed that people with mental infirmaries were overrepresented in the unemployment statistic. Even war veterans suffering from mental illnesses had trouble getting their share of state support and could be defined as being unpatriotic. Accordingly, people with cognitive disabilities or mental illnesses were later priority targets for sterilization.

Ideas of body functions also went hand in hand with Hitler’s racial theory. For instance, Hitler concluded that ‘the Jew lacks those qualities which distinguish the races that are creative and hence culturally blessed’ (1992, 275). In doing so, Hitler constructed the other, based on ideas concerning body function. In turn, this kind of normality-based philosophy shaped the premises for his recommendations regarding, for instance, what educational program he was willing to support, in which body function emerged as the determining factor that granted access to the schooling system. Following Hitler’s reasoning, a child with disabilities should be excluded from any higher education initiatives, or as stated in Mein Kampf: ‘indeed the highest intellectual training could not be justified if its bearers were at the same time physically degenerate and crippled’ (1992, 371). Mental capacity was also identified as an admission ticket to certain rights, such as freedom of speech. To show an interest in politics was, Hitler (1992, 32) wrote, a ‘duty of every thinking man’; and ‘[a]nyone who failed to understand this lost the right to any criticism or complaint’. Thus, having problems meeting those ideals could be used as a marker and an excuse for restriction of civil rights.

Not only did Hitler suggest mental capacity was a vital feature, he also used Mein Kampf to further accentuate how it was correlated with physical status. ‘[I]f the mass of a people consists of physical degenerates’, he warned, ‘a really great spirit will very seldom arise’ (Hitler 1992, 371). According to Keys (2009), the Nazi regime turned physical training into a collective phenomenon that was to be placed in the service of the nation. In many ways, this stands out as the main feature of Hitler’s vision of a future German nation – and much of his rhetoric revolved around the allegation that this aspect had been seriously neglected by his political opponents, who ‘went on sinning against the body’ (Hitler 1992, 230).

This celebration of the strong body also resulted in recommendations regarding what would permeate education and shape the German child. The creation of the strong citizen had to start in childhood, which explains Hitler’s demand for more physical training in the curriculum and hard exercises such as boxing. Thus, sports later became important features in Hitlerjugend and the leisure-time organization Kraft durch Freude (Hitler 1992, 373; Keys 2009). According to Keys (2009, 395), the purpose of the physical education advocated by the Nazi regime had greater implications in that it was also supposed to transform the thinking of the individual, making it more in line with ‘the state’s agenda’. ‘Thus, the whole system of education’, Hitler (1992, 231) concluded, ‘must be organised as to use the boy’s free time for the useful training of his body’. Barnes (1996, 52) reminds us that the ancient Greeks had an ‘obsession with bodily perfection’. Similar ideas can be found in Hitler’s reasoning. ‘What makes the Greek ideal of beauty a model is the wonderful combination of the most magnificent physical beauty with brilliant mind’, concluded Hitler (1992, 371). As discussed by Poore (2007), there was an aversion against deviance in the interwar Germany in which the public, for instance, protested against the establishment of institutions for people with disabilities since they might awake feelings of repulsion. Propaganda in the Nazi era also placed perfect bodies alongside lower rated bodies with the rhetorical question to the Germans about which future they preferred. For Hitler, this interest in the body also contained a gender dimension, since it was mainly male citizens who were supposed to represent military strength, while the woman was to be shaped into a ‘future mother’ (Hitler 1992, 377; see also 372). All of this underlines an idea that Hitler harbored ˗ the body as a collective phenomenon. ‘We must’, he proclaimed, ‘do away with the conception that the treatment of the body is the affair of every individual’ (1992, 231). In addition, this quest for the perfect body was also part of Hitler’s elitist thinking in which selected individuals, above the average, were to serve as role models for the nation in general. In addition, he seemed distressed that physical beauty was ‘forced entirely into the background’. For him, promoting beautiful figureheads was in the interest of the state and was seen as a kind of gift to the nation, or as Hitler concluded: ‘[T]he most beautiful bodies should find one another, and so help to give the nation new beauty’ (1992, 375).

Thus, an important truth claim in Mein Kampf is the notion that humanity is about perfection – a template featuring specific mental and physical capacities. In relation to strategies for intervention, Hitler proposed the state as the guardian for the transformation and consolidation of this desired human status. This, in turn, relates to modes of subjectification in the sense that Hitler stressed the duty of every citizen to work on their bodies and move closer to the perceived template of bodily normality.

The right kind of disability

Mein Kampf is also a text that clearly underlines a correlation between culture and disability in terms of lifestyle and morals. In Hitler’s view, the traditional way of life was put in the back seat by the urban way of living, which led to diseases such as syphilis and tuberculosis. As pointed out by Poore (2007), diseases in Germany, were also consequences of wartime conditions and malnourishment. But for Hitler, diseases were rather part of an ongoing political and cultural process that made Germany weaker, or as outlined in one of his passages:

[R]unning parallel to the political, ethical, and moral contamination of the people, there had been for many years a no less terrible poisoning of the health of the national body. Especially in the big cities, syphilis was beginning to spread more and more, while tuberculosis steadily reaped its harvest of death throughout nearly the whole country. (Hitler 1992, 224)

Hitler considered syphilis to be a form of cultural disease – a hallmark of a culture gone wrong. Just like tuberculosis, syphilis could have a profound impact leading to lifelong disabilities (for example, Wiwanitkit 2007). For Hitler, syphilis was directly associated with prostitution, which too was placed within his racial theory. ‘This Jewification of our spiritual life and mammonisation of our mating instinct will’, he wrote, ‘sooner or later destroy our entire offspring’ (Hitler 1992, 225). In the long run, the quest for shady profit was thus intertwined with the incidence of disability. Concurrently, Hitler’s reasoning concerning syphilis mediated a threat to society in the sense that the coming generation was in danger of being physically weaker. For Hitler, it was crucial to combat the kind of selfish behavior in which children suffer for their parents’ ‘sins’ (1992, 226). In so doing, he also established a link between disability, activity and morals, which was also evident in relation to sports. The ‘youth who achieves the hardness of iron by sports and gymnastics’, Hitler (1992, 230–231) claimed, ‘succumbs to the need of sexual satisfaction less than the stay-at-home fed exclusively on intellectual fare’. Mental disabilities could also be seen as a consequence of a moral deficit and an incorrect way of living. ‘The most visible results of this mass contamination [syphilis] can’, he asserted, ‘be found in the insane asylums’ (1992, 225). With statements like this, Hitler also reinforced the link between bad morals and mental disabilities. By consigning mental disabilities to certain institutions, he made the threat of mental disabilities even more real.

Simultaneously, looking at interwar Germany from a disability perspective suggests a higher grade of complexity. According to Barney and Dalton (2006), the later Nazi system categorized clients as those who were worthy (e.g. disabled soldiers) and unworthy (e.g. congenital disabilities). Snyder and Mitchell (2006, 123) also remind us how disabled veterans and ‘dynamic disabled laborers’ generally were excluded from the T4 program. Poore (2007, 68) also points out that ‘racial hygienists sought to reassure the public that their sterilization law applied only to people with hereditary disabilities and not to those whose disabilities had resulted from military service or workplace accidents’. The national socialists even accused the Weimar government ‘for treating [wounded veterans] as second-class citizens and welfare recipients. Therefore’, Poore (2007, 69) concludes, ‘the Nazis vowed to treat disabled veterans as heroes’. Subsequently, the Nazi regime later felt a need to clarify their politics in relation to disability, instructing, for instance, newspapers to name disabled veterans as the ‘honored pensioners’, and even declaring them to be the ‘first citizens of the nation’ (2007, 88 and 97). Some years after Mein Kampf was released, the Nazi party even built their own propaganda apparatus that would increase the support of the veterans (Cohen 2001).

However, this line of demarcation was founded already in Mein Kampf in the sense that disability becomes a value-based construction placed also within a heroic narrative of duty. While attacking the outcome of the First World War, and reinforcing the stab-in-the-back legend, Hitler recognized the heroic nature of the disabled veterans – all those who were ‘maimed’ during the conflict (1992, 250). In doing so he also reinterpreted disability in a way that moved the phenomenon closer to emerging, extensive social movements, such as the National Association of Disabled Soldiers, which gave voice to people with war-related disabilities (Cohen 2001; Poore 2007). This attempt to highlight specific forms of disabilities based on its causes is notable also when Hitler used himself as an example of how disability was intertwined with a strong moral character. When he, after being wounded in the war, wrote about sacrifice and his own ‘fear of going blind’, he blurred the line between us and them (Hitler 1992, 185–186). Even the highest and most valuable German was running the risk of facing disability, which turned it into a more universal phenomenon – placing disability in line with national state solidarity. The fact that Mein Kampf was translated into Braille, or that Hitler, after coming to power, appears in photographs greeting veterans in wheelchairs, is logical as part of an effort to secure loyalties and to combat some of the ‘bitterness of war victims’ (cf. Cohen 2001, 63; Watt 1992; Poore 2007).

In sum, a crucial truth claim in Mein Kampf was that disability could be explained as a kind of negative cultural outcome. Simultaneously, disability was depicted as an ambiguous phenomenon in the sense that it was interpreted and judged in different ways – where threat and pride represented opposite poles. Once again, strategies to reduce and prevent disability were presented as a responsibility both for the state and the individual. Disability therefore emerged as a multilayered phenomenon based on its origins.

Concluding remarks

A crucial dimension of the biopower of the Nazis was the idea of a superior Germanic race along with notions of normality. Not only did Hitler plead for racial thinking, he also appeared as the prophet of the perfect body, which was related to Social Darwinism, theories of degeneration and an ongoing competition between nations and races. For Hitler, humanity should be measured against a template of defined bodily ideals. In this, the state emerged as a crucial agent that was supposed to safeguard the right type of institutional interventions (e.g. eugenic measures). Concurrently, Hitler must be understood in relation to his own context. As discussed by Snyder and Mitchell (2006), the eugenic philosophy was a transnational phenomenon in the beginning of the twentieth century. Following that train of thought, Hitler was not a lonely, immoderate cry in the wilderness, but rather part of something bigger in the wake of modernity. Hitler did not necessarily regard himself as an initiator or leader within eugenics. On the contrary, he even pleads for the necessity for Germany to follow in others’ footsteps.

In several ways, Hitler put disability in relation to contextual changes (e.g. urbanization), in the sense that the incidence of disability was explained by individual flaws and cultural decadence, something that has not been fully recognized in previous research concerning Nazism and disability. Concurrently, the regulation of life and the body was presented as a responsibility of the individual.

Simultaneously, Hitler’s reasoning rested on different disability narratives, living side by side, that contained opposing ways of understanding the phenomenon depending on their origins. In this, the narrative of sacrifice joined hands with the new disability movement that emerged in the wake of the First World War. Not only does this underline the idea that bodies were to be put in the service of the fatherland, but it also illuminates how disability as a phenomenon filled an important mobilizing and rhetorical function within the frames of the political ideology, which underlines a connection between the disability politics of the Nazi regime, as outlined by Poore (2007), and the reasoning of Hitler. The Nazis clearly needed different and parallel disability narratives, which reminds us that the interpretation and construction of disability was not given, but affected by various mechanisms. The Nazi border between us and them, based on body premises, was thereby strengthened and weakened at the same time.

In Hitler’s view, human dignity correlated with the notion of normality and the ability to meet certain roles and demands (e.g. gender), which also underlines how disability and the body are linked to contextual frames and was understood as a heterogeneous phenomenon (e.g. mental disabilities representing a major threat).

Not only did disability and biopower play a significant role in the Nazi ideological program, the analysis also underlines the link between race and disability within Hitler’s reasoning. As suggested by Snyder and Mitchell (2006, 127) in relation to Eugenic Atlantic: ‘Rather than sustain race and disability as separate phenomena within eugenics, we identify a convergence that condemns stigmatized groupings to a shared, deterministic fate’. This article reinforces that statement by showing its validity in relation to the ideological base of Nazism. Clearly Hitler’s rhetoric links racial features with the presence of disability. Not only do bodily characteristics become part of his constructions, but an inferior race also increases the incidence of disabilities, which in turn suggests a more compound race theory hidden in the Nazi ideology, something that deserves more attention within disability research (see Meekosha 2006). Following Hitler’s line of argument, it was not enough to be an Aryan; you had to be the right type of Aryan, which further underlines the consistency between Hitler’s ideological world and the policy surrounding people with disabilities. Hitler’s utopia was not just about one people, one leader, one empire. It was also a call for one type of human in which the body was seen as the property of the nation – a vision with gruesome consequences.

Even though a more profound reasoning concerning disability theory is beyond the scope of the article, this scrutiny may also contribute to a discussion regarding how to explain disability as a phenomenon. In concert with Shakespeare (2006) and Bhaskar and Danermark (2006), the analysis calls for a multidimensional understanding of disability that entails various and even competing mechanisms – which, in turn, problematizes a social model that defines disability foremost in terms of general structural oppression and barriers (see Oliver 2009). In opposition, an analysis of disability in the landscape of the Nazi ideology must highlight both impairment and the body within the framework of the sociocultural context. In doing so, a complex system is uncovered in which impairment and the body were interpreted in different ways. Not only were congenital disabilities valued less than acquired disabilities, the latter, too, were stratified depending on their origins in relation to other activities and roles (e.g. military service vs. sex trade). Thus, people with disabilities were not necessarily subject to a universal type of oppression, but rather their status varied depending on other value systems and ideas. Several studies engaging in Mein Kampf and the Nazi ideology have shown its repressive character in relation to disability (for example, Benedict, Shields, and O’Donell 2009; Bhopal 2005; Gittelman 2006; McInnis 1985). In doing so, some of the complexity of the ideas concerning disability (e.g. cultural decadence as a constructor of disability) – in relation to the rhetoric of Hitler – has been given less attention. In contrast, this article underlines how biopower is not necessarily a uniform phenomenon, but sometimes contains various and competing forms of logic and cultural mechanisms at one given moment. The borders between binary categories, identified by Goodley (2014) as an essential part of biopower, can sometimes be more complex and blurred than they first appear, which stresses the need for more nuanced and cultural analyses of ideas in relation to the body within the range of Disability Studies. In parallel, a number of questions can be raised. For instance, are there elements in the reasoning and philosophy of the Nazi ideology that can be traced to today’s ableism and the belief in the body as an individual project in the name of neoliberalism (see Goodley 2014)? What are the relations between new prenatal diagnostic techniques and earlier forms of eugenic ideas? In answering these questions, history remains an inescapable part.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Estimates of the exact number of people killed varies and may even be much higher (for example, Grue 2010).

2. A translation is always a limitation in the sense that it is an interpretation (e.g. concerning lexical equivalents). Still, the translation of, for instance, metaphors, in this case, offers no real challenges, but rather the grammar (e.g. the long German sentences) (Hitler 1992, vii–x, translator’s note).

3. There is also a discussion regarding the amount of assistance Hitler received from others in the compilation of the book (for example, McInnis 1985).