Hitler`s American Model - The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law

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Nazism emerged in Germany during the era of Jim Crow laws in the United States, raising the question of whether American racial oppression inspired the Nazis. The unsettling answer is yes. James Whitman conducts a thorough investigation into the American influence on the Nuremberg Laws, the central anti-Jewish legislation of the Nazi regime. He challenges the notion that there was no meaningful connection between American and German racial repression, revealing that the Nazis had a sustained interest in American race policies. Whitman illustrates how the Nuremberg Laws were developed with significant consideration of American legal precedents. German admiration for American practices, noted in Hitler's Mein Kampf, persisted into the early 1930s, with radical Nazi lawyers advocating for these models. While Jim Crow segregation was appealing to Nazi radicals, the most significant influences were American citizenship laws and anti-miscegenation statutes, which directly informed the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Whitman highlights the irony that the Nazis sometimes rejected American practices not for being too enlightened, but for being too severe. By linking American race laws to the formulation of Nazi policies, this work reshapes our understanding of America's role in global racist practices.