American democracy and liberty might appear to be the opposite of the fascism and horrors of Nazi Germany. But for many, it is intuitive that the United States parallels Nazi Germany’s racism in both law and practice. Hitler’s American Model by historian and legal scholar James Q. Whitman provides material essential to understanding how and why the United States and Nazis share certain similarities.
Depending on the reader’s perspective, Whitman’s central argument seems either modest or bold, as he claims, “What all this research unmistakably reveals is that the Nazis did find precedents and parallels and inspirations in the United States” (10). The most radical Nazis were often the most enthused about American legal precedents. More moderate, less anti-Semitic members of the Nazi Party tended to be more skeptical of American approaches. For some Nazis, “American race law looked too racist” (5). America “was the leading racist jurisdiction” in the 1930s (138).
Before proceeding, it is important to note that Hitler’s American Model is not a book about the Holocaust. Rather, this book investigates institutional discrimination against Jews in 1930s Germany and against people of color throughout U.S. history. In the 1930s, both the United States and Nazi Germany assaulted their own citizens. As Whitman explains, “Jews of Germany were hounded, beaten, and sometimes murdered, by mobs and by the state alike. In the same years the blacks of the American South were hounded, beaten, and sometimes murdered as well” (3).
As a legal history, Hitler’s American Model draws primarily from American and Nazi laws and synthesizes the readings and writings of leaders in Nazi law regarding American legal precedents for racism. Whitman also devotes significant attention to Hitler’s Mein Kampf because it served as a manifesto for Nazi ideology and hatred. Mein Kampf praised America as the only nation that had “made progress toward the creation of a healthy racist order of the kind the Nuremberg Laws were intended to establish” (2).