How American race law provided a blueprint for Nazi Germany

Nazism  triumphed in Germany during the high era of Jim Crow laws in the United  States. Did the American regime of racial oppression in any way inspire  the Nazis? The unsettling answer is yes. In Hitler’s American Model,  James Whitman presents a detailed investigation of the American impact  on the notorious Nuremberg Laws, the centerpiece anti-Jewish legislation  of the Nazi regime. Both American citizenship and antimiscegenation  laws proved directly relevant to the two principal Nuremberg Laws―the  Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Contrary to those who have insisted  otherwise, Whitman demonstrates that the Nazis took a real, sustained,  significant, and revealing interest in American race policies. He looks  at the ultimate, ugly irony that when Nazis rejected American practices,  it was sometimes not because they found them too enlightened but too  harsh. Indelibly linking American race laws to the shaping of Nazi  policies in Germany, Hitler’s American Model upends the understanding of America’s influence on racist practices in the wider world.

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