ABSTRACT
Having studied several crucial phases in the development and reception of the body-parasite metaphor scenario in Nazi Germany over the period 1930-1945, we can return to the question of how to explicate its cognitive import, i.e. the way in which it was understood by its users and hearers as a meaningful depiction of politics that could even motivate them to engage in specifi c actions. In view of the historical consequences, the answer to this question is far from trivial; however, at fi rst glance, those text passages from Nazi discourse (whether from Mein Kampf or from later speeches) that contain relevant metaphor uses seem so absurd that it is diffi cult to take them seriously. The descriptions of social and national groups in terms of animal organisms and the practical conclusions that the Nazis drew from them are so obsessive and grotesque that their rational discussion seems impossible. Hence, historians have described their content as “entering the world of the insane” or sheer “nonsensicality”. Indeed, when analysed stringently for logical consistency at either the source level of biology and medicine or at the target level of politics, the metaphor scenario of the German nation’s fi ght for its life against the Jewish parasite race is riddled with contradictions and non sequiturs. However, when analysed as a metaphoric blend that “created” its own meaning system, the scenario did show a high degree of internal coherence and also an enormous scope that ranged from accounts of alleged crimes over socio-political analyses and overviews of German national history to eschatological and cosmic visions (see Chapter 3). Hitler used it as a conceptually closed, universal frame of reference to perform his political speech acts of warning, threatening and promising/ prophesying. At the time of writing Mein Kampf, he could do no more than perform these speech acts in theory, as he was imprisoned. But the “action points” of his metaphorical scenario spelt out what would be carried out if and when he acquired the political power to fulfi l his “vision”, as was demonstrated in all its genocidal consequences during 1933-45.
