Nazis quickly modernized their rhetoric, and indeed the imagery of cancer was far more apt for their purposes. As was said in speeches about “the Jewish problem” throughout the 1930s, to treat a cancer one must cut out much of the healthy tissue around it. The imagery of cancer for the Nazis prescribes “radical” treatment, in contrast to the “soft” treatment thought appropriate for tuberculosis—the difference between sanatoria (that is, exile) and surgery (that is, crematoria). The Jews were also identified with, and became a metaphor for, city life—with Nazi rhetoric echoing all the Romantic
...more
