Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law

224 Pages·2017·1.87 MB·English

by  James Q. Whitman

Hitler’s AmericAn model

H i t l e r ’ s
A m e r i c A n
m o d e l
tHe United stAtes And tHe
mAking of nAzi rAce lAw
James Q. Whitman
Princeton University Press
Princeton and Oxford
Copyright © 2017 by Princeton University Press
Published by Princeton University Press,
41 William Street, Princeton, New Jersey 08540
In the United Kingdom: Princeton University Press,
6 Oxford Street, Woodstock, Oxfordshire OX20 1TR
press.princeton.edu
Cover design by Faceout Studio, Charles Brock
All Rights Reserved
ISBN 978- 0- 691- 17242- 2
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016960238
British Library Cataloging- in- Publication Data is available
This book has been composed in Futura Std and Sabon Next LT Pro
Printed on acid- free paper. ∞
Printed in the United States of America
1 3 5 7 9 10 8 6 4 2
for tHe gHost of
loUis B. Brodsky

contents
A Note on Translations ix
Introduction 1
cHAPter 1 17
Making Nazi Flags and Nazi Citizens 17
The First Nuremberg Law: Of New York Jews and
Nazi Flags 19
The Second Nuremberg Law: Making Nazi Citizens 29
America: The Global Leader in Racist Immigration Law 34
American Second- Class Citizenship 37
The Nazis Pick Up the Thread 43
Toward the Citizenship Law: Nazi Politics in the
Early 1930s 48
The Nazis Look to American Second- Class Citizenship 59
Conclusion 69
cHAPter 2 73
Protecting Nazi Blood and Nazi Honor 73
Toward the Blood Law: Battles in the Streets and
the Ministries 81
Battles in the Streets: The Call for “Unambiguous Laws” 81
Battles in the Ministries: The Prussian Memorandum
and the American Example 83
Conservative Juristic Resistance: Gürtner and Lösener 87
The Meeting of June 5, 1934 93
The Sources of Nazi Knowledge of American Law 113
Evaluating American Influence 124
Defining “Mongrels”: The One- Drop Rule and the
Limits of American Influence 127
viii • contents
conclUsion 132
America through Nazi Eyes 132
America’s Place in the Global History of Racism 137
Nazism and American Legal Culture 146
Acknowledgments 163
Notes 165
Suggestions for Further Reading 197
Index 201
A note on trAnslAtions
Translations of German texts are all my own, unless otherwise
noted. I have done my best to render the originals into idiomatic
English without distorting their sense. Readers can consult the key
passages in the original at http://press.princeton.edu/titles/10925
.html.
One German text is especially important: the transcript of the
June 5, 1934, meeting discussed in detail in Chapter 2. That tran-
script appears in a German multivolume series publishing materi-
als on the drafting history of German criminal law and criminal
procedure: Jürgen Regge and Werner Schubert, eds., Quellen zur
Reform des Straf- und Strafprozeßrechts (Berlin: De Gruyter, 1988– ).
The relevant volume (vol. 2:2, pt. 2) includes two versions of the
transcript, one full and unedited, and the other subsequently
edited down in consultation with the participants. The series is
available at major American law libraries. Since the transcript is a
stenographic record of a daylong meeting, it is too lengthy to be
reproduced in full.