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<p>Foreword</p> <p>Acknowledgments</p> <p>Glossary</p> <p><b>PART ONE: The young men of Germany</b></p> <p><b>Chapter 1: A 'world of enemies' (I)</b></p> <p>The outbreak of war</p> <p>The silence of the Akademiker</p> <p>The 'time of troubles': an experience of war?</p> <p><b>Chapter 2: Constructing networks</b></p> <p>Places to study</p> <p>Places of association</p> <p>Networks of solidarity</p> <p><b>Chapter 3: Activist intellectuals</b></p> <p>The construction of academic knowledge</p> <p>Knowledge and activism (1919-1933)</p> <p>'Combative science' and SS intellectuals in the Third Reich</p> <p>The shadow of the Great War</p> <p><b>PART TWO: Joining the Nazis: a commitment</b></p> <p><b>Chapter 4: Being a Nazi</b></p> <p>The foundations of the doctrine</p> <p>The origins of Nazi fervour: planning a sociobiological</p> <p>re-establishment</p> <p>The appropriation of a system of beliefs</p> <p><b>Chapter 5: Entering the SD</b></p> <p>Whether to enter the Party or not?</p> <p>Towards the SD: Nazi careers</p> <p>Recruitment: a social mechanism of enlistenment</p> <p><b>Chapter 6: From struggle to control</b></p> <p>From the 'Security Department of the SS' (SD) to</p> <p>the 'Reich Security Main Office' (RSHA)</p> <p>A 'world of enemies' (II)</p> <p>Control</p> <p><b>PART THREE : Nazism and violence: the culmination 1939-1945</b></p> <p><b>Chapter 7: Thinking the east, between utopia and anxiety</b></p> <p>The curse of Germanic isolation</p> <p>The Nazi project for a sociobiological re-establishment</p> <p>Redevelop and settle: forms of Nazi fervour</p> <p><b>Chapter 8: Arguing for war: Nazi rhetoric</b></p> <p>From the reparative war to the 'Great Racial War'</p> <p>From the discourse of security to the discourse of genocide</p> <p>Expressing violence: defensive rhetorics, utopian rhetorics</p> <p><b>Chapter 9: Violence in action</b></p> <p>The experience of violence</p> <p>Demonstrative violence, violence of eradication</p> <p>A transgressive violence</p> <p>Violence as rite of initiation</p> <p><b>Chapter 10: SS intellectuals confronting defeat</b></p> <p>Defeat rendered unreal</p> <p>Finis Germaniae. The return of the old anxiety</p> <p>The denouement</p> <p><b>Chapter 11: SS intellectuals on trial</b></p> <p>Strategies of negation</p> <p>Strategies of evasion</p> <p>Strategies of justification: the Ohlendorf case</p> <p><b>Conclusion: Memory of war, activism and genocide</b></p> <p>Notes</p> <p>Sources and bibliography</p> <p>A piece of research and its context</p> <p>A specific conceptual framework</p> <p>List of archival collections consulted</p> <p>Printed sources</p> <p>Bibliography</p>

<p>"a thoughtful, well researched, and well written addition to the field of perpetrator studies—a work that illustrates convincingly the role of Germany’s “best and brightest” in the prosecution of genocide."<br /> <i><b>Holocaust and Genocide Studies<br /> </b></i><br /> "A chilling collective portrait of a generation blinded by the fervor of their ideology and oblivious to the suffering of others."<br /> <i><b>Wall Street Journal</b></i><br /> <br /> "Packed with useful information on this important Nazi cadre."<br /> <i><b>Standpoint</b></i><br /> <br /> "Presents gripping accounts of particular spectacles of violence and their role in imposing order."<br /> <i><b>Los Angeles Review of Books</b></i><br /> <br /> "With this quest for understanding in mind, Ingrao has undertaken what is clearly a mammoth historical task, and ultimately written an astonishingly profound and in-depth book on a subject that ought never be forgotten."<br /> <b><i>David Marx Book Reviews</i></b><br /> <br /> "This is an important and original study of ideology and experience rather than yet another catalogue of crime, and it therefore offers a different and powerful explanation for how educated men became perpetrators of mass murder."<br /> <b>Richard Evans, University of Cambridge</b><br /> <br /> "How did highly educated German intellectuals of a certain generation make themselves into believing Nazis, career-minded ideologues, and practitioners of terror? In compelling detail and in a manner consistent with the best accomplishments of recent scholarship, Christian Ingrao guides us astutely and assuredly through this shockingly normalized interior world."<br /> <b>Geoffrey Eley, University of Michigan</b></p>

<p><b>Christian Ingrao</b> is the director of the Institut de l'histoire du temps présent. A specialist in Nazism and war studies, he also teaches at Sciences-Po. His previous work, <i>Les Chasseurs Noirs</i>, was an international success.</p>

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