Hitler’s American Model: The United States & The Making Of Nazi Race Law

By Charles Ponnuthurai Sarvan –JUNE 29, 2017

Prof. Charles Sarvan

Book Review – James Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, Princeton and Oxford, 2017

Hannah Arendt in The Origins of Totalitarianism states that one of the major contributions of the Western world has been “race-thinking”, as distinct from “class-thinking”. Race is a political, and not a biological, concept. ‘Race’, a concept without scientific foundation, does not lead to racism; rather it’s racism that creates race. Ta-Nehisi Coates writes in Between the World and Me that racism is not the innocent product of Mother Nature; race is not the father of racism but its child. And, Whitman observes (p. 117), unfortunately even mentally gifted individuals are not immune from the sickness of racism.

Whitman, a Professor of Law at Yale, is meticulously careful not to over-state the case in his study: influence does not mean exact imitation but, rather, selective borrowing and adaptation. The Nazis were not demons who suddenly erupted on stages: there were traditions within which they worked, continuities, examples and inspirations (p. 15). It must be borne in mind that contemporary Germany rests on the moral foundation of refusing to deny responsibility for what happened under the Nazis (ibid). Germany has repeatedly acknowledged guilt, expressed contrition, paid reparation. One recalls Willie Brandt, Chancellor of Germany, spontaneously kneeling (7 December 1970) at the monument to the victims of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. It was a silent but brave and eloquent gesture, most unusual for a head of state. Equally, it may seem strange to see America as an inspiration for the Nazis because the USA soon fought Germany, and has long set itself as a bastion of freedom and democracy (p. 140).

James Whitman, Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, Princeton and Oxford, 2017

But in the 1930s, Nazi Germany and ‘Jim Crow’ America were similar in that both were “unapologetically racist regimes”. For example, “American blacks being de jure citizens, were de facto second class” (p. 39) while Nazi Germany had Reichsbürger who possessed full rights and mere Staatsangehörige. America was for the Nazis an excellent example of a country with racist legislation and practice. Prior to the Shoah, sporadic riots and attacks on Jews, condoned but not organised by the State, were equated with the lynch-mobs in America: one recalls the song  “Strange fruit grows on Southern trees”, made famous by the 1939 Billie Holliday recording (now available on the ‘Net’). Hitler admired the way Americans had killed and reduced millions of Native Americans to a few hundred, and kept the modest remnant under observation in cages: Hitler, quoted on p. 9. (In passing, I would draw attention to The Other Slavery: The Uncovered Story of Indian Enslavement in America by Andres Resendez, 2016.) To the Nazis, the very foundation of America was a fateful turning point in the worldwide rise of white domination:  the US Naturalization Act of 1790 opened naturalization to “any alien, being a free white person” (p. 34).  “America may have been the global leader in the creation of racist law, well known and much cited long before Hitler came to power” (p. 70). Germans paid “studious scholarly attention to American immigration Law”” (52), “hailing America as a forerunner of Nazism” (p. 54). On 23 September 1935, forty-five leading Nazi lawyers sailed to America on a first-hand study-tour (p. 132) because in the early twentieth century, America was “the leading racist jurisdiction” (p. 138, original emphasis). Characteristic of race-thinking the world over, a very small minority (here, the blacks) were seen as trying to “get the upper hand” (67).

But the nefandus (such shame or evil that it cannot be spoken of) both for Americans and Nazis was inter-racial sexual relationships outside and within marriage; more precisely, between individuals of different skin pigmentation. (Often what is meant by a “race” problem in the West means a “problem” of colour difference. Elsewhere, I have suggested that in such contexts, “colourism” is a more accurate word than “racism”.) Of course, American society turned a blind eye on children born of the rape of slave women: the incidence was too common.

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