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.