Hitler: “Innumerable sicknesses have their origin in one bacillus: the Jew! We will get well when we eliminate the Jew.”

Hitler imagined that—as “Doctor of the German people”—he would restore Germany’s health by destroying the cause of her decline.

On the evening of July 10, 1941, Hitler declared at his table (in Hitler’s Table Talk 1941-1944):

I feel I am like Robert Koch in politics. He discovered the bacillus, and therefore ushered medical science onto new paths. I discovered the Jew was the bacillus and fermenting agent of all social decomposition.

At Hitler’s table talk on February 22, 1942, the following statement was recorded:

It is one of the greatest revolutions there has been in the world. The Jew will be identified! The same fight that Pasteur and Koch had to fight must be led by us today. Innumerable sicknesses have their origin in one bacillus: the Jew! We will get well when we eliminate the Jew.

Hitler’s Nazism had nothing to do with Darwin or Darwinism. Rather, he identified with Robert Koch, who discovered the tuberculosis bacteria in 1882 (seven years before Hitler was born), and who postulated that each disease was caused by a specific pathogenic microorganism.

Hitler, according to Robert Proctor (“Nazi Medicine and Public Health Policy”), was considered the “great doctor” of German society—the “Robert Koch of politics.” Hitler conceived of himself as that politician who could cure the disease from which the nation was suffering—restore Germany to health.

What a fantastic idea—that a political leader proclaims in public that his nation can be relieved of its suffering—its greatness restored—if a certain class of people is removed from within the body politic.