Prevailing wisdom suggests that the Holocaust was the direct result of the election of Adolf Hitler and the rise of fascism in Germany. But Holocaust scholar F. K. Clementi says there may be more to the story.

She examines American antisemitism, xenophobia, and racism – with an emphasis on the late 1800s through World War I – and concludes that the Holocaust was quite plausibly the consequence of a long-in-the-making design.

Clementi is associate professor of Jewish Studies and Peter and Bonnie McCausland Fellow of English Language and Literature at the University of South Carolina, where she teaches graduate and undergraduate courses on the Holocaust and women’s cultural production. She is the author of Holocaust Mothers and Daughters: Family, History, and Trauma, and has written several articles on genocide and the relation between patriarchy and violence.