Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law
by James Q. Whitman  (Author)

About the Author
James Q. Whitman is the Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School. His books include Harsh Justice, The Origins of Reasonable Doubt, and The Verdict of Battle. He lives in New York City.

About this book
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. 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.

Brief contents
Introduction
Chapter 1: Making Nazi Flags and Nazi Citizens
    The First Nuremberg Law: Of New York Jews and Nazi Flags
    The Second Nuremberg Law: Making Nazi Citizens
    America: The Global Leader in Racist Immigration Law
    American Second-Class Citizenship
    The Nazis Pick Up the Thread
    Toward the Citizenship Law: Nazi Politics in the Early 1930s
    The Nazis Look to American Second-Class Citizenship
    Conclusion
Chapter 2: Protecting Nazi Blood and Nazi Honor
    Toward the Blood Law: Battles in the Streets and the Ministries
    Battles in the Streets: The Call for “Unambiguous Laws”
    Battles in the Ministries: The Prussian Memorandum and the American Example
    Conservative Juristic Resistance: Gürtner and Lösener
    The Meeting of June 5, 1934
    The Sources of Nazi Knowledge of American Law
    Evaluating American Influence
    Defining “Mongrels”: The One-Drop Rule and the Limits of American Influence
Conclusion: America through Nazi Eyes
    America’s Place in the Global History of Racism
    Nazism and American Legal Culture
Acknowledgments
Notes
Suggestions for Further Reading
Index

Pages: 224 pages
Publisher: Princeton University Press (February 21, 2017)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0691172420
ISBN-13: 978-0691172422

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