Hitlers amerikanisches Vorbild

by James Q. Whitman, Andreas Wirthensohn (Translator)

Als in Deutschland die Nationalsozialisten triumphieren, ist in den USA die hohe Zeit der „Jim-Crow-Gesetze“, mit denen die Diskriminierung der Schwarzen geltendes Recht wird. Eine zufällige Parallele? Was kaum zu glauben klingt, das dokumentiert der Rechtshistoriker James Q. Whitman unwiderleglich: Der Rassismus in den USA lieferte den Nazis Anschauungsmaterial für die Diskriminierung der Juden. Der Empfang durch die New Yorker Anwaltskammer sei „warm“ und „besonders befriedigend“ gewesen, befand Ludwig Fischer. Der Jurist, der 1947 hingerichtet wurde, war Leiter einer Delegation, die sich auf eine „Studienreise“ in die USA begeben hatte. Die Reise im September 1935 war als Belohnung für ein Jahr „harter Arbeit“ gedacht, das die Ausarbeitung der „Nürnberger Rassengesetze“ und die Überwindung „überholter“ Rechtsstandpunkte allen Beteiligten abverlangt hatte. Nun aber war man in dem Land, von dem man so viel gelernt hatte und von dem man noch mehr lernen wollte: Wie man Rassengesetze nicht nur macht, sondern auch wirksam umsetzt.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Politics, Race, American History, Law, Germany

249 pages, Hardcover

First published March 7, 2017

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.

Reviews

[lindsi · Rating 3 out of 5]

It wasn’t *bad,* but the author clearly has an uncritical fondness for America that renders him unable to accurately convey how brutal and systematic American racism really is. In particular, in the conclusion he argues that America has never been fascist, because American racism isn’t “organized” or “state-backed.” This is obviously ridiculously untrue, as the American state has thrown its full force behind genocide, mass incarceration, border camps, concentration camps, segregation, slave patrols, police, mass rape and mass death of all kinds against the indigenous, Black and brown people of this country.

I would love to see a treatment of this topic by a historical materialist rather than a milquetoast liberal. There’s clearly tons to unpack but this author was unwilling to do so, and what he did unpack was constantly tempered by assurances that of course America is (at least in spirit) dedicated to liberty and equality for all, and that America is in no way *causually* linked to the rise of Nazism, nor has it engaged in crimes of the same magnitude.

LOL k.

[Sara Salem · Rating 5 out of 5]

In which you find out that the Nazis thought American race laws were TOO severe.

[Mehrsa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yikes. If you're going to make a claim like this, you better provide ALL the receipts. The claim is that the Nazis borrowed heavily from American race law to craft their own. And the receipts are unfortunately all there. Turns out, the US legal system was the global innovators in racial exclusion, segregation, and anti-miscegenation laws. On that last point, our laws were too strict for the Germans. Now, obviously, they went well beyond where the US went with the holocaust, but as Whitman points out, the initial point was not extermination, but containment and removal of rights. And it turns out the US legal system taught them how to do that. Yikes.

One of the most fascinating tidbits (as a law professor) is how appealing our common law system was to them and how much more amendable it was than a civil law system to exploitation by the Nazi party. I had never considered that. The flexibility of our common law courts allow for cases like Brown v. Board of Ed, but they also suited the enforcement of the Nurenmberg laws. Yikes.

[Vincent Li · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is fascinating, disturbing, and nuanced. With the bold title, and swastika on the cover, the book certainly turns heads (I learned quickly that I probably should have taken the book cover off while reading it in public). However, at the end of the day the author is a law professor, and like most law professors writes in a hedged, and nuanced tone. The book suggests more than tells, but is a valuable read regardless. At some level, the book seems not to match the provocative title at all, but I argue that this makes it more worth reading than otherwise.

At the core of Whitman's thesis is that American legal traditions and laws in the late 1890s-1930s are more influential (influential to Whitman does not mean the Nazis always admired or approved but does mean beyond superficial intellectual engagement) in Nazi thinking than previously suggested in the historical literature. People looking for silver bullet answers that America is to blame for the Nazi regime will be sorely disappointed. Whitman does not argue that the Nazis lifted American laws or that the American legal tradition is responsible for the horrible crimes of the Nazis.

His argument is more subtle, he argues that America was a "model" for the Nazis (the Nazi attitude towards the United States at least before the war seemed ambiguous, they approved of certain American race laws but saw Germany as the logical culmination of such laws, and the US in constant threat of backsliding into its liberal open door traditions). Through varied and meticulously researched historical record piecing (this itself is worth the read without the analysis), Whitman shows that the Nazis were deeply interested and surprisingly well versed in American law in the areas of Jim Crow, immigration law and most damningly anti-miscegenation laws. Partially, this was not unique in that this was something that the Anglo-legal world had in common but since the United States was the leading power of the world it provided an interesting model for Nazi legal thought. Unflatteringly, Whitman argues that America was on the frontier of race law. Whitman shows that there was intense domestic Nazi interest and discussion of American law from within Mein Kampf to the internal discussions leading up to the Nuremberg laws. The Nazis were particularly interested in the laws that created de facto second class citizenship in the US for non-whites (ultimately, choosing to not wrestle with the American struggle between the 14th amendment equality guarantees and its de facto removal of citizenship rights through literacy tests and disenfranchisement but choosing to have an openly racist state). Interestingly, the Nazis found some American measures such as the one drop rule and racial social segregation as too extreme and harsh. Whitman admits that obviously, the Nazis had to adapt Jim Crow to their racist policies towards Jews, but that did not rule out the use of Jim Crow as a legal model for trained lawyers. The Nazis praised early American immigration laws creating quotas on nationalities (unique in the world at the time) as recognition of "healthy" race policy.

Most damningly, when the Nazis debated the Nuremberg laws over banning marriage between Germans and Jews, American anti-miscegenation laws played a large role. The more traditionally "moderate" Nazi legal scholars objected to the criminalization of interracial marriage, since in Germany only bigamy was criminalized and the scholars were concerned with the lack of a "scientific" definition for Jews. However, the "radical" faction brought up American anti-miscegenation laws as an example of a system that both criminalized interracial marriage (rare for the world at the time, and complete with maps of different state laws) and operated without a clear definition of race. In fact, according to Whitman, the Nazis had great admiration for the common law and its flexibility. Even more disturbingly, the Nazis had an admiration for the legal realism of the 1930s, with its desire to replace "formalism" with political and "flexible" lawmaking. Whitman argues that in Germany, legal scholars trained in the civil law tradition acted as brakes on the Nazi legal regime in the early days, and that there is a disturbing similarity between the legal realism and the lawlessness of the Nazi regime. Whitman argues near the end that the US differed vastly from the Nazis because it never made race policy the center of its state apparatus (being bound by the 14th amendment).

I can't decide if I'm annoyed with (what I assume is) the publisher's decision to feature such an inflammatory cover and title. On one hand it draws attention to a fascinating scholarly topic, but on the other hand it suggests a thesis different from the content of the book. On a minor note, this book seems to continue the annoying trend of publishing what should be a long law review article in a small hardcover book priced at an outrageous 25 dollars!, but I digress.

[Ailith Twinning · Rating 1 out of 5]

If you're actually interested in the book, it's got little real content, so here's the TL;DR

"Nazis admired some stuff about America, especially its racism and Jim Crow as movements to a racial state and pro White Supremacy - and the lack of traditional legal classifications to allow for innocence until proven guilt or precedent for miscegenation laws was discussed in the context of those of the US. However, the US should never be compared to the Nazis, are not responsible for the Nazis, and are a force for good now, regardless our past, or indeed, our present."

----

Not only is this book painfully long for how little it has to say -- the above is the entire argument -- it's a cowardly defense of the US' behaviour before, during and after the War. This falls firmly in the camp of center-right apologetics. And yet the author seems to feel like he's being naughty.

Tell me mate, what is the difference between the Nazis and the Mao Mao 'revolt'? How about the US and Cambodia, Korea, Laos, Vietnam, Chile, or any other of our Cold War victims of our terrorism and wars of aggression? Hitler had two crimes, War of Aggression, and Genocide. Either of which America has him beat to shit on. For God's sake we killed half a million children in Iraq, in 1996. Even if you want to throw in "Overthrew a Democracy" for Hitler, then the US' running tally is over 50 at this point, we still win for evilest empire ever.

If you're going to compare the USA to Nazi Germany, do it. Otherwise, fuck off with your milquetoast rebellion.

[Mike Thomas · Rating 3 out of 5]

Contains important and fascinating research, but it was written in a very repetitive way.

[Fiona · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is written in what I think of as "academic recursive," a writing style most frequently exhibited by post-secondary professors. It stems, I believe, from the traditional essay structure employed by university students everywhere wherein the writer tells you what they are going to say, and then they say it, and then they remind you of what they just said. It annoys the crap out of me.

Allow me to save you the trouble of having to read this book: the Nazis thought American laws relating to marriage between people of different "races" were inspirational. Its tarted up like a bigger scandal than it is frankly, and the book focuses on what the Nazis said about the laws rather than discussing the restrictions themselves.

[Randall Wallace · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hitler in 1928 openly admired the United States, saying we had “gunned down the millions of Redskins to a few hundred thousand, and now keep the modest remnant under observation in a cage.” Hitler saw how fellow Jew-hater Henry Ford was into building cars for the American masses and that led Hitler to the making of the Volkswagen - designed by none other than Porsche. Then following Hitler’s lead, the Nazis studied the archives of US racist eugenics theory and studied our own long genocidal quest for Lebensraum (esp. California) - Isn’t it great how the U.S. is such an inspiration to others! “In the early twentieth century, the United States was not just a country with racism. It was THE leading racist jurisdiction.” If only we were taught in school to picture the 1930’s as a time when not one but two “unapologetically racist regimes unmatched in their pitilessness” existed: we were all taught about the Nazis with the Jews in the 30’s, while conveniently told nothing about our similar treatment of blacks then in our own country (Jim Crow). And it should be noted, blacks were being lynched well after WWII was over. Thurgood Marshall said the American Constitution “was defective from the start” and “many of the Founders held beliefs we find reprehensible”. Nazis loved US race law with its separate water fountains, separate bathrooms, schools, bus seating etc. Never in my life have I seen photos of Jews with their signs and restrictions NEXT to photos of Blacks during Jim Crow with their equally evil 1930’s restrictions. Our culture cannot tolerate us making that connection. When as a teen-aged bully, the U.S., took its ‘guns-a-blazing’ show on the road in the Philippines, it found it could control foreign locals by legally defining them as “non-citizen nationals” – thus, on a people who merely wanted independence like us, was bestowed “a de jure form of second-class citizenship for the newly conquered populations.”

We were taught how Nazis made Jewish people second class citizens, but never taught that at the same time in the US, Puerto Ricans, Filipinos, Chinese, Blacks and Native Americans were ALSO considered second-class citizens. I’ve never heard any American point out that example of hypocrisy, all I ever heard was how Germans took away freedom and fairness in the 30’s, while the U.S. was somehow a bastion of freedom and fairness. Let’s look at it: Americans alone came up with “lynch justice” and for a while “there a plan to create a Negro reservation in the Southern states, similar to the Indian reservations.” Did you know famed black boxer Jack Johnson wasn’t allowed to return to the U.S. for the shocking crime - of marrying a nice white woman who loved him. “The US was THE model for anti-miscegenation legislation.” “Nazi lawyers, even radical ones, found American law on mongrelization TOO harsh to be embraced by the Reich.” Southerners love their tradition and will enjoy that American anti-miscegenation law dates back to Virginia 1691 – Nazi’s saw how vagueness worked well in the US South – a sign that simply said, “colored” was all that was needed for the oppression to take hold. When the Nazis in 1934 got together to dress as transvestites and debate the best way to institutionalize hardcore racism, they first asked: how did the Americans do it? They admired how Thomas Jefferson said, “It is certain that the two races, equally free, cannot live in the same government.” Then, they admired all those early white American Founders in wigs.

The Nazi’s released their Nuremburg Laws to try to minimize the nasty type of street lynchings they had noticed in the U.S. South – the U.S. responded to the German Nuremburg Laws the only way it knew how – lynchings in the US “noticeably” rose at that time. Lynch justice was not to be denied in the land that invented both institutionalized racism and the selling of lynching postcards. This book reveals Nazi efforts “to mine American race law for inspiration during the making of the Nuremburg Laws.” It was great, because it made me think of a lot more critical but uncomfortable things in American History that all citizens need to know to resist the myth of our exceptionalism and/or the branding of “the other.”

[Jonathan Blanks · Rating 4 out of 5]

I think the book is useful, but it makes far too many apologies for American law and culture. If anything, this repeated "its very uncomfortable and hard to believe but true" mantra that repeats throughout the book underscores how Americans have yet to really cope with the monstrosities that were Jim Crow, anti-miscegenation, and even our immigration laws were (and are, in the last case). I'm not saying the author shouldn't have mentioned it, but it's repeated throughout the book so often and instead, it could be laid out in the foreword and perhaps repeated in the first chapter, and then simply supported with the facts he marshals throughout the book before restating in conclusion.

The other flaw is in the last chapter, where he cites a mishmash of legal and historical trends and muddles them considerably. In particular, someone not familiar with American jurisprudence would think most US courts common law rather than statute-based given his description. He uses a lot of legal terms and jargon and he doesn't define or distinguish to the extent that he should have (particularly the differences in civil versus criminal law). Such sloppiness leaves the author open to criticism, though in toto these problems do not really harm the thesis.

All in all, it's a good summation of how US law influenced the Nazi regime. I was already familiar with the Nuremburg laws but the research and work done to draw the direct lines of influence are, I think, a valuable addition to the understanding of the era.

[Doug Gillan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Hitler's American Model, greatly reduced in length, would have made a wonderful article in the New Yorker or the Atlantic. It contains some very interesting ideas and informations, perhaps four major points. But in book length, it becomes repetitive to the edge of belief. Several times, I thought that I must be rereading a section of the book because, I believed, that the exact same words were being repeated. Is there such a thing as self-plagiarism within a book? But the interesting ideas are very good -- including ***SPOILER ALERT****(1) that Nazi race laws were informed by, if not based on, race laws in the American South; (2) that the pragmatic American system of common law, in comparsion to the European system of civil law, was also attractive to the Nazis because they could bend it to their needs; (3) that Nazism was a populist movement, intended to make access to many of Germany's resources available to every member of the German Volk (so, only Nordic, non-Jewish people). ***END SPOILER SECTION****

[Michael Quinn · Rating 2 out of 5]

I wrote an extended review of Hitler's American Model for a law school course in legal history, so I have many thoughts. To put it briefly, I think the book has a fatal lack of historical context. Whitman’s marshaling of primary Nazi sources is impressive. He cites an incredible wealth of documents geared both to the mass membership of the Party and more technically-minded lawyers and officials, all of which make laudatory references to American law on racial matters. While praise for American law from such reprehensible sources helps to drive home the wretched legacy of American legalized racial discrimination, the most shocking of Whitman’s claims are untenable. He cites extensive Nazi references to American race-based immigration law as evidence of its influence on the Nuremberg Laws’ citizenship provision. But Nazi citizenship law was concerned with stripping political rights away from Jews who had been born Germans, and it is not a comparable area of law to that governing the admission of foreigners. While Whitman is stronger in his argument that Nazis may have looked to the Insular Cases and Indian law in America for examples on second-class citizenship, he devotes less space and has fewer sources on these issues. Whitman also makes rather extreme conclusions about the nature of American legal culture and the legal realist doctrine fashionable in the 1930s, based on Nazi perceptions of them, which unfairly maligns the impact of legal realism in reversing the American racial laws that the Nazis found so admirable.

Whitman’s greatest fault, however, is his failure to contextualize his key source in its place in Nazi history and hierarchy. His scant attention to the Nazi rejection of rule of law on ideological principle is a gross oversight, particularly for lay or legal readers who may be unfamiliar with Nazi history and thought. Fatal to his claim of an American model for the Nuremberg Laws is his failure to demonstrate substantive links between Nazi writing on American law or the June 1934 commission meeting (which he basis most of his argument on) to the laws that were promulgated in September 1935. The commission and its leaders were outside the core of Nazi power and at odds with its philosophy, making Whitman’s reliance on it as essential to Third Reich lawmaking very questionable. Furthermore, an examination of the actual drafting and enforcement of the Nuremberg Laws—which is totally unaddressed by Whitman—reveals no hint of the discussion of American law being of import.

Not to delve too far into detail, but Whitman bases most of his book on a transcript of a June 1934 criminal law reform commission meeting which included in-depth discussion of American race laws and comparing them to Nazi proposals for anti-Jewish laws. What he fails to mention is that the chair of the meeting, Justice Minister Gürtner, was a nationalist conservative holdover who had been in office since 1932, only joining the Nazi Party in 1937. Contrary to Nazi ideology, he firmly believed in the use of written law and procedures, and had established the commission to revise the Reich Criminal Code of 1871 in accordance with Nazi ideology. According to preeminent historian of the Third Reich, Richard J. Evans, the commission was unable to keep up with the continuous creation of new criminal offenses by the regime, and its “legalistic pedantry” was rejected by Nazis who refused to put its drafts into effect. The commission was thus an unimportant feature of Third Reich policymaking, which perhaps explains why its June 1934 transcript garnered so little attention from scholars before Whitman, despite being first published in 1989.

Despite the failure of his most sensational claims of American law serving as a model for a genocidal regime, Whitman’s extensive collection of Nazi discussions of American race law is of some interest, providing a reflection of our law in a dark mirror. As Whitman correctly states in a moment of restraint, “Seeing America through Nazi eyes does tell us things we did not know, or had not fully reckoned with—things about the nature and dimensions of American racism, and things about the place of America in the larger world history of racism.” As a work of persuasive scholarship, however, Hitler's American Model is a failure.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Would've made for a decent 35 page essay, but the urge to turn it into a book ultimately transmogrified it into a repetitive mess. The story of influence it tells certainly feels compelling, but not that much effort seems to have been expended in telling a very academic story, with so many avenues left unexplored. A disappointment.

[Ruya Hazeyen · Rating 3 out of 5]

It would’ve been more interesting if the author wasn’t saying some center-lib bs every few paragraphs. How do you write about the U.S. being so racist that the nazis found them to be too extreme while still spewing American exceptionalism???The mental gymnastics is almost impressive

[Ross · Rating 5 out of 5]

DeSantis is definitely going to try to burn this one.

[Edward Sullivan · Rating 5 out of 5]

A painstakingly researched, deeply disturbing, and completely conivncing study of the profound influence America's eugenics movement and racist laws had upon Nazi codification of its own racist agenda.

[Dschreiber · Rating 4 out of 5]

In a memorable scene from the movie "Judgment at Nuremberg," the defence lawyer played by Maximilian Schell reads a legal opinion to the court: “We have seen more than once that the public welfare may call upon the best citizens for their lives. It would be strange indeed, if it could not call upon those who already sapped the strength of the state for these lesser sacrifices in order to prevent our being swamped by incompetence. It is better for all the world if, instead of waiting to execute degenerate offsprings for crime or to let them starve for their imbecility, society can prevent their propagation by medical means in the first place. Three generations of imbeciles are enough.” Snapping the book closed, Schell continues, “The opinion upholds the sterilization law in the State of Virginia, of the United States and was written and delivered by that great American jurist Supreme Court Justice, Oliver Wendell Holmes.” It is an unsettling moment in the film. Although the American precedent is not developed any further, it hints at a disturbing reality.

Could Oliver Wendell Holmes really have written such a thing? Could the words have been taken out of context? Could it be more than a rhetorical flourish? While racism was there for all to see in the American South with its segregationist Jim Crow laws, putting America side-by-side with Nazi Germany sounds almost obscene. And even if we must acknowledge that the Nazis regularly quoted U.S. eugenicists and U.S. race laws as precedents, we want to believe that such efforts were sheer propaganda, a shabby effort to put a veneer of respectability on their own odious regime.

Unfortunately, as J. Q. Whitman shows in Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, the truth is much uglier than this. The truth is that the Nazis undertook a deep and sustained study of the laws of America as they were designing their infamous anti-Semitic Nuremberg Laws, because America was for them, as Hitler himself said in Mein Kampf, the one state that had made progress in developing a “healthy racial order.” To be sure, Britain was no slouch, along with its colonies and dominions, when it came to racist immigration preferences, treatment of non-whites, and so on. But America appealed to the Nazis more by being explicit in its laws—and harsher. Until at least 1936 Nazi Germany remained hopeful that it could “reach out the hand of friendship” to the U.S. on the basis of a shared commitment to white supremacy.

This may seem at first to be an extreme interpretation, but doubts quickly disappear as Whitman, Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale Law School, offers copious quotations from German texts of the 1930s. With chilling effectiveness, Hitler's American Model reveals how deeply a second current runs in the American system, counter to its high ideals of freedom, equality, and the rights of man, a current of white, even Aryan, racism.

While today Jim Crow laws probably come to mind most easily for us, they were not the focus of the Nazis who, after all, did not plan to create an apartheid regime. Their aim was—before the 1942 Wannsee Conference and its genocidal Final Solution—to drive non-Aryans out of the country and create a racially pure state. Their tools would be new laws on citizenship and sexual relations.

Citizenship law in America drew a clear race line as far back as 1790 when the Naturalization Act allowed citizenship to “any alien, being a free white person.” In the following century denying citizenship to Asians became the focus. Indigenous peoples were marginalized by being deemed “nationals” but not citizens. And when the Spanish-American War brought new non-white peoples into the American system, the U.S. Supreme Court allowed the creation of second-class citizenship for Puerto Rican and Filipino subjects, a disempowered status of “non-citizen nationals,” “foreign to the United States in a domestic sense.”

African-Americans presented a special difficulty as a result of the Fourteenth Amendment of 1868, which gave them citizenship rights; however, the Nazis were careful to note that, especially at the state level, “all means are used to render the Negro’s right to vote illusory” through petty measures such as poll taxes, literacy tests, etc. Most states, too, had laws to restrict African-Americans in their freedom of movement and career possibilities. The few Asians and Mexicans who had made it into the country had their voting rights blocked with similar legislation. Legal ingenuity such as this was appreciated by the Nazis, and in the case of the Czechs they did use a second-class status similar to the American example. But within Germany they were determined to be direct in their purposes by instituting straightforward racist laws.

According to Whitman, from the late nineteenth century to the 1920s and 1930s the United States came to be regarded not just by the Nazis but throughout Europe as “the leader in developing explicitly racist policies of nationality and immigration.” As the National Socialist Handbook put it, until the coming of Hitler, the United States had held “the leadership of the white peoples” in the “Aryan struggle for world domination”—although it had merely groped its way toward the historic mission to be undertaken by Germany.

The passing of the U.S. Immigration Act in 1924 delighted Hitler. He took as a given its Asian Exclusion Act (an extension of the 1922 Cable Act which revoked the citizenship of American women who married an Asian), but the National Origins Act struck him as especially revealing, for it favoured immigrants from the “Nordic” countries while limiting immigrants from southern and eastern Europe. For him it was a prime example of völkisch citizenship legislation—in fact, the only in modern times. Hitler spoke of it in combination with the earlier genocidal wars on indigenous peoples, believing that it showed clearly that the U.S. was “the model of a state organized on principles of Rasse and Raum,” that is, on the principles of race and the seizure of territory for a völk defined by race.

But immigration and citizenship laws are not enough to create a racially pure nation. There had to be metrics to determine the degree of acceptable racial purity and laws to prevent racially mixed births ("mongrelization," in Germany, "miscegenation" in America). Here again America provided the precedents for Germany, and in particular for the Nuremberg Blood Law where, according to Whitman, the American model is seen at its most influential. In many societies mixed marriages have been discouraged through social constraints and sometimes they have been annulled as a matter of civil law, but historically bigamy has been the only form of marriage subject to criminalization and prosecution. In their review of American legislation, the Nazi researchers found that thirty states had passed criminal laws against miscegenation, some of them with penalties as severe as ten years imprisonment. (Virginia continued to enforce its miscegenation statute until 1967, when the Supreme Court, in the case of Richard and Mildred Loving, struck it down. See the 2016 Hollywood film, “Loving.”) The Nazis passed their own criminal laws against race mixing, but the Americans, they thought, had been too harsh, especially with the “one-drop” rule that some states used to define Negroes. As a result, the Reich Citizenship Law of 1935 was milder, defining a Jew as a person having three Jewish grandparents; and it allowed as a mitigating factor the degree of a person’s assimilation into non-Jewish society. The Jim Crow laws, too, were seen by the Nazis as going too far; German laws prohibited German women from consorting “indecently” with black men in public, but they did not place sanctions on private behaviour, as in the U.S.

Nazi Germany showed racism in its ugliest, most murderous form. However, a clear-eyed look at the historical record, such as we get in Hitler's American Model, is a healthy reminder that the nations that banded together to destroy Nazi Germany were also infected by the same disease, the difference being simply in the degree of toxicity.

[Camille]

Whitman ne se contente pas de comparer les lois raciales nazis (lois de Nuremberg) et les lois raciales aux USA (par exemple le principe du one-drop rule). Il montre la fascination et l'intérêt des juristes du NSDAP pour les lois raciales dans les pays de common law et pour celles des états du Sud aux USA en particulier. Si, pour Whitman, l'idée que les états du Sud étaient fascistes n'est pas opérante, il souligne avec force que les juristes se sont fortement inspirés (et même ont édulcoré le principe du one-drop rule) des lois raciales et de l'idée de sous citoyenneté (pas seulement limité aux Noirs américains mais qui s'appliquait aussi aux Philippins, aux habitants d'Hawaïi, aux Portoricains) pour développer les lois de Nuremberg.
La conclusion, qui revient sur l'actualité des lois criminelles aux USA, est convaincante : Whitman revient sur l'idée que les nazis auraient instauré un positivisme juridique, et démontre que c'est la common law qui a servi de sources d'inspirations aux juristes en charge du nouvel État.

[Shayla · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a short, interesting book about how Nazi’s used a lot of the lessons from the USA in the Jim Crow laws to form their ideas for the Nuremberg laws. Basically the book looks at two main ideas- 1) How the US used law to define citizenship and who could influence policies by voting, and 2) how the US determined who could be a member of society in regards to blood and birth as well as criminal penalties states had for people who intermarried with other races. It’s wordy, uses a lot of legal jargon, and broadly doesn’t really say anything super new, but the examples were super interesting and it has some parallels for today specifically in regards to citizenship. Whitman tries to be very, very factual and while he names a lot of Germans, he keeps it very palatable to American readers, in my opinion, which I definitely understandable. There is a reason why no one gets mad at teaching about the atrocities of Nazis but anything about American racism is “CRT”. 🙄 Interesting, though not really life changing.

[Nick Girvin · Rating 3 out of 5]

The short version:
In terms of writing style, credibility, and engagement? Great! In terms of narrative? Eh…

The long version:
So, I guess to highlight what’s good about this, is that it accidentally works as a really great, easy to read, and well researched resource for how the Nazi race laws came to be, and how they took inspiration from very specific U.S. laws. For one, it makes itself clear that the author does NOT think Nazi race laws were simply packaged and sold from the United States, pinning Uncle Sam as responsible for Hitler’s atrocities. Rather, it aims to point out two big parallels and a few small side ones. The making of a Nazi “citizen” was the one that took heavy influence from early U.S. immigration laws, and the one that was almost a mere copy, the the blood laws of what constitutes someone as actually being a Jew; in fact, it’s pointed out that U.S. laws on what pass for “negro” “Indian” etc. were far more aggressive than what passed someone as a Jew in Nazi Germany. Moreover, it briefly touches on how Manifest Destiny would lead to inspire the conquest of Europe, flag making, and other small details. Hell, it even compared black deportation solutions in post-Civil War America to Zionism in Europe around the same time, which (intentionally or not) further reveals the truth about what’s going on in Palestine now. These are all important, but there’s a little more to this, so stick with me here.

It’s crucial to note that much of this was drafted prior to the extermination days of the SS, and that the big difference is that Germany was more explicit in its race laws, as opposed to the U.S. more or less trying to hide their race laws under (not so) sneaky Jim Crowe laws (which led to a large block of unnecessary text on realism at the end that really could have been cut). Naturally, as we know, Hitler then brought these extremes to a far higher level of state power and brutal extermination that the U.S. probably hadn’t seen since the trail of tears. So with all of this in mind, what is the problem with this narrative?

Well, it’s about what isn’t here, and the fact that there doesn’t seem to be one despite the title suggesting otherwise. It would be fine if it were a simple “history of the U.S. and Nazi race laws,” but it’s not. Again, this is all solid information to hold onto, however it never really comes to a conclusion that seems to matter outside of “we need to re-examine how we look at U.S. law.” Well, no shit, Sherlock. It gets awfully close to driving this point home in the literal last pages around how we still see remnants of this in many of our legal practices today, but it fails to draw that connection to anything further. What should this re-evaluation aim to change? What’s the bigger picture at work here? What should U.S. citizens do with this information? Why do we care about what laws written nearly 100 years ago did for the world’s most notable fascist regime? None of that is answered, and it just feels a little misleading.

A confession; I bought this nearly two years ago in the earlier days of latching onto certain political principles, and I may have obtained it with a “prove a point” mindset of one-upping someone to show that the U.S. isn’t ~actually~ this beacon of hope, peace, freedom, and prosperity. Not only is that a bad way of going about research, but I’ve also long since learned that very truth in far more pragmatic ways, and no longer need the easy strawman of “but hey! Hitler liked the U.S.!” to defend my stances, because as true as it is, it holds little in terms of moving my thoughts forward. And, I also care less and less about arguing politics the older I get anyway.

I guess if nothing else, Hitler’s American Model serves as a good starting point that re-affirms all of the things U.S. “patriots” like to conveniently overlook: slavery, genocide, racist law, etc. However, I find it far more effective to look to the likes of Vincent Bevins’ The Jakarta Method, and get a real taste of covert treatment from the CIA, the Reagan administration, the United Fruit Company, Kissinger, etc. and events like the Vietnam War, Iraq invasion, Iran Contras, etc. meant to maintain the relentless grip of western capital and profit. Because at the end of the day, that has a far greater hand in how things are here and now, no matter how much people will try and pretend that race plays no role in day to day life for so many. You almost have to try to fall into the borderline Stockholm Syndrome that many unironically walk around with today when it comes to politics, but I guess you can’t blame someone who is a product of their environment. And if this book is someone’s first foray into an understanding of politics that isn’t regurgitated, packaged-and-sold garbage that you can’t avoid from your local Facebook news, then I say give it a whirl! It’s short and easy and took almost no time.

[greeen · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title of this book is a little misleading. This content was more of a comparison of racism in law between Nazi Germany and the United States after the Civil War. Still a valuable read. It gave me a lot to think about in terms of where we are today in the US and where current trends might lead. I would have benefitted from a fuller explanation of common law vs. code law, which was an important distinction that recurred throughout the book. Interestingly, the end touched on the harsh extremism and exceptionalism of today's American criminal justice system, noting that laws instituting severe punishments against habitual offenders (Three Strikes You're Out) echo similar Nazi laws.

5 stars for information
3 stars for clarity of delivery - a fair amount of unnecessary repetition
3 stars for not always knowing what was a quote and what was narration (audio version)
4 stars overall

[Lee · Rating 5 out of 5]

Fascinating and disturbing. Builds its main (and most terrifying) argument around the single transcript of a meeting of Nazi lawyers prior to the adoption of the Nuremberg Laws. The deeper point that the author makes is about the ways of constructing and applying law, and how America’s common law tradition, in combination with its history of racism, enabled jurists to embed racist concepts into law.

[Luis · Rating 5 out of 5]

Coming to this book I was already startled by the idea that the United States had "influenced" or "inspired" Nazi German policies during the rise of Hitler's Third Reich. Too simplistic in light of the author's conclusion which discusses the USA's common-law tradition and how it was that which the German lawyers sought to emulate even more. This is particularly disturbing as that common law tradition, for all the good it has contributed to American society and culture, has also been weaponized to rationalize the irrational and legalize the unlawful. Germany's lawyers operating under the Nazi regime discovered in America's philosophy of law the means to foment their version of legal realism towards a racist state which they were convinced the United States was destined to become but was being held back by liberal as well as formalistic legal appreciations.

Despite America's appeal to its founding documents the Constitution in amendments like the 14th, the Nazi lawyers keenly observed contradictory existence of a legal philosophical "loophole" the allowed politics and ideology to influence the creation and execution of racist laws that would allow for the creation of a "legal" second class citizenry (e.g. blacks, Puerto Ricans, Native Americans, etc.). Granted, as James Whitman emphasizes, this American legal tradition paved the way for social democracy to finally take root in American politics in the form of the New Deal and the civil rights movements but it was also used by racist political leaders to institutionalize racism. As Whitman warns in his conclusion, "...to have a common law system like that of America is to have a system in which the traditions of the law do indeed have little power to ride herd on the demands of the politicians, and when the politics is bad, the law can be very bad indeed."

Among a host of other things, Nazi Germany is a lesson of what happens when lawyers and judges become mere politicians in robes governed by a perverse irrational political theory that will stop at nothing to support heinous and cruel policies. Whitman correctly points to a current example in the USA: our criminal justice system. One of the most punitive in the democratic world that is negatively influenced by individuals --judges and prosecutors-- yielding primarily to ideological and political considerations that trump lawfulness while denying a reasonable path towards restorative justice. Even today, the American legal system remains vulnerable to the political headwinds that allow for racial injustice and the unequal treatment of "undesirables" to continue. This should put fear in the hearts of those concerned about the direction of American politics and how it will impact our courts, and our lives, for generations to come.

[704graham · Rating 2 out of 5]

The amount of apologia for American racism is frankly disgusting and does a disservice to the decent research into German-American judicial exchange. There is an absurd amount of mental gymnastics at the beginning of each section, all to make America seem as though it has put its racist policies of post-Reconstruction in the past. It feels at times as though half the book is trying to soften the blow of the similarities of the post-Reconstruction USA and Nazi Germany. This incessant hand-wringing of differences overplays the USA’s incredibly minor role in defeating Nazi Germany in WWII as a moral opponent to Fascism. This constant prefacing of America’s supposed anti-fascism does much of the work of fascism itself; redirecting a critical eye on pre-war American corporate collusion with the Nazis, the size and influence of the “America First” movement, and general indifference of the US government towards the crimes against humanity that were being perpetrated by the Nazis. The Author’s refusal to examine American-German relations also conveniently absolves the more unsavory actions of the post-war US. Especially the American backing of regimes like the Nazi-led Bonn Republic (West Germany), the large number of Japanese and Nazi war criminals that were given refuge by the US (Operation Paperclip, MK Ultra, etc.), or the large amount of monetary and military support for ex-Nazi terrorism in the USSR (Gehlen Org, OUN/UPA, etc.).

Given that this book was written in 2018 I understand that the American judicial system was regarded in some circles as just and followed a magical “arc of progress”. This view, that the author seems to hold throughout the book, is a phenomenally naive and dangerously unserious approach to American law that has given way to the current far-right Roberts Court. It is reluctant to confront the reality of its own subject, a reluctance which strains under the weight of its own well-done and meticulous research.

The actual research that was conducted is very well done and comprehensive. The presentation of that research after pages and pages of qualifiers diminishes the impact that this scholarship can have.

[Sasha · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite its bombastic, eye-catching title, the book is a sober historical and legal analysis of source material related to the crafting of Nazi Race Law and the inspirations (and limitations) of the United States example in that process. Through published materials, transcripts of contemporary discussions, and memoir accounts from the period, the author deftly explores the influence the example of the United States was to a foreign state as a model of a white supremecist legal system - one even many Nazis thought went too far in its callousness. In the conclusion, we do not just see an analysis of the influence of the American example in international racist lawmaking, but we also see a warning - a warning that the same legal philosophies and institutions that allowed for the propogation of racist laws and human misery still undergird the system today and allow for repetition if left unaltered.

[Ben Burtzos · Rating 4 out of 5]

Focuses primarily on the period from 1933-1935 and the debate leading up to the Nuremburg Laws of 1935. Research is substantial and persuasive; writing quality, less so. Whitman spends a great deal of time apologizing for making the comparison between American race law and Nazi law. In truth, I suspect few people would pick up this book unless they knew what they were getting into.

This is not a period of Nazi history likely to be overly familiar to casual readers. Whitman drops names like Schleicher and von Papen with little to no explanatory information.

Worth the read, but most beneficial to readers with fairly substantial knowledge of Nazi bureaucracy. I continue to think William Shirer's "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich" should be the initial point of study for students of Nazi Germany.

[S.M. · Rating 2 out of 5]

I gave this book a low rating not because of its content (which I believe everyone should be aware of), but because it was repetitive, boring, badly written, and contained a LOT of bowing and scraping. With all the apologizing and assurances that yes, this is all just so gosh darn terrible for ordinary people to contemplate (Americans being the Good Guys* since day one, right?) but we need to kind of know it, you know?--it just felt tired from early on. I feel like the author was terrified of being labeled a traitor for writing this book, even if the majority of its contents are old news.

[Chloe Z · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really cannot recommend this. It does say Nazis looked to the American legal system for parallels, precedents, inspirations, but America cannot be held accountable for providing an ideological example for causing Nazi genocidal acts. I just really cannot stand how Whitman wants to make a moral judgment, which is not entirely necessary, he could've just discussed the textual evidence, but throughout the book he defends and emphasizes the democratic image of America. Like my mentor once said, if you want to throw a punch, punch HARD! : <

[Bobby Daugherty · Rating 2 out of 5]

Highlights the influence American policy had on Germany. Completely ignores Missouri executive order 44 (the Mormon extermination act). Mormons were welcomed in Germany by Hitler, but we all know of a religious group that wasn't.

[Ben Anderson · Rating 5 out of 5]

“This too has to be part of our national narrative.”

Damn straight.

[Valerie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Major bummer.