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. Contrary to those who have insisted that there was no meaningful connection
between American and German racial repression Whitman demonstrates that the Nazis took a real
sustained significant and revealing interest in American race policies. As Whitman shows the
Nuremberg Laws were crafted in an atmosphere of considerable attention to the precedents
American race laws had to offer. German praise for American practices already found in
Hitler's Mein Kampf was continuous throughout the early 1930s and the most radical Nazi
lawyers were eager advocates of the use of American models. But while Jim Crow segregation was
one aspect of American law that appealed to Nazi radicals it was not the most consequential
one. Rather both American citizenship and antimiscegenation laws proved directly relevant to
the two principal Nuremberg Laws--the Citizenship Law and the Blood Law. Whitman 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 understandings of America's
influence on racist practices in the wider world.
