Hitler's American Model

The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law

By: James Q. Whitman

Narrated by: James Anderson Foster

Length: 5 hrs and 36 mins

Publisher's summary

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.

©2017 Princeton University Press (P)2018 Tantor

Critic reviews

"An important book every American should read." (Donté Stallworth)

Great performance overall

Very well researched book. Only criticism is that the author misses a connection to progressivism here in the United States. Once Government is granted power to engineer a society,, it is open to such abuses and an erosion of legal protections.

Think we’re the good guys?

An awful story because what is says about the USA. The quick take away is that the Nazis were inspired by our race laws how the “pure Aryans” settled the West. Except that the Nazis thought our Jim Crowe laws were too severe. Imagine - Hitler and company thought that WE the “shining city on the hill” were too harsh and draconian when it came to how we treated people of color. Wow. This was of course was before WW2 and before the murderous “final solution” of genocide. This was when the Nazis just wanted the Jews to leave.

An eye-opener. Klan = Nazism

With all the stuff going on in this country this book points out the very procedures, or lack there of, enacted to be a totally authoritative government.

Germany didn't see it coming. And we're looking at it right before our eyes.

troublingly insightful.

offers a fair surprising view on American legal precedence for racism and the extent to which it lead and inspired racist refines like the Nazi party, but carefully avoids blame or excuses for the atrocities of that Regime

German & US History compared with brutal candor

This book looks deeply and candidly at the model studied and borrowed from by the policy makers of Nazi Germany - that being the laws and policies of racism from the earliest days up to and including the early 1900s United States of America and, if we are truly honest with ourselves, continuing right up to present day. Things American historians always seem to choose to ignore are viewed through the eyes of truth, allowing for the pain to be experienced in its entirety. Every American should read this book!

Solid treatment of a grim topic

I was aware that Hitler and the Nazis admired some things about America. This book showed me that the admiration was more than extensive than I thought.

The Terrible Truth

This book exposes the awful truth that American race law was inspirational as a judicial framework for Nazi race law during that horrendous time in world history. The truth of this is inescapable as the author brings irrefutable proof from history.
As important and scholarly as this work is I feel it is incomplete if one is looking to really understand the race issue. This write up is not so much a review as it is a plea for those interested in this subject not only to listen to this book but in addition listen also to “Death Of A Nation Part1: Plantation Politics And The Making Of The Democratic Party “by Dinesh D’Souza both I feel are critical for a more complete understanding of this issue as it relates to yesterday (this volume ) and then D’Souza’s excellent piece of historical scholarship that delves into the past and the present. It is also available on Audible. To listen to one of these volumes without the other I feel would be incomplete.

A lot of information

it's hard to face the truth but, it's important to know the true history. This book made me see things in a way I never had before and I feel better equipped to spot issues within our current systems.

You don't learn this in history class

Seeing how much inspiration Nazi Germany took from America doesn't surprise me. this book enables many dots to be connected that would not be allowed to connect in most western spaces.

Did not we suspect this?

Highly encourage all thoughtful .people to read carefully. I finished this book the day Trump proclaimed the sight of barbed wire on our southern border "is a beautiful thing" , has illegally deployed thousands of armed troops against suffering refugees.

We were Hitler's Model for Nazi race legislation.
This book is carefully researched and document
ed. Not a rant. It is a study of how the Nazi jurists in Germany crafted race law by studying US. Law in 1933

Thoughtful reading on the eve of midterm 2018 elections