Lethal Elites

This eye-opening book highlights the role of elites in constructing systems of persecution and extermination during the Holocaust.
Being highly educated or living within a certain social class doesn’t prevent us from being lured into destructive systems, especially when they operate to our benefit. The perception that the Holocaust was largely a crime carried out by ill-educated thugs acting on nationalistic hysteria and xenophobic prejudice is a myth. Leaders from many sectors of society, including industry, science, and religion came to support and enable the Nazi government, often due to the ways in which they were able to profit and benefit from the policies of persecution and genocide. With both a social science and historical approach, Lethal Elites highlights and assesses the ways in which the influence, training, and expertise of the most powerful and best educated were used in service to the genocidal agenda of the National Socialist Regime.

Author Biography

Dr. Alex Alvarez is a Professor in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at Northern Arizona University. From 2001 until 2003 he was the founding Director of the Martin-Springer Institute for Teaching the Holocaust, Tolerance, and Humanitarian Values. In 2017-2018, he served as the Ida E. King Distinguished Visiting Scholar in Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Stockton University. His main areas of study are in the areas of collective and interpersonal violence and his previous books include Government, Citizens, and Genocide, Murder American Style, Violence: The Enduring Problem, Genocidal Crimes, Native America and the Question of Genocide, and Unstable Ground: Climate Change, Conflict, and Genocide.

Dr. Richard R. Fernández is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology at Northern Arizona University (NAU). His involvement in the current book grew out of a friendship with Alex Alvarez a colleague at NAU and scholar of genocide. They collaborated on a paper presented at the Pacific Sociological Association meetings in 2015 titled: Legitimizing Mass Killing:Social Elites, Genocide, and the Manufacture of Acceptance. This led to the development and drafting of the current submission of Lethal Elites.