Reddit mentions of Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law

Nazi Germany actually sent lawyers to the United States to learn about the racist legal system in the US to help them create their own. When they returned other Nazis didn't believe some of the laws could be so racist like anti miscegenation laws.

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-American-Model-United-States/dp/0691172420/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1505057658&sr=8-1&keywords=hitler%27s+american+model

I recently finished Ibram Kendi's Stamped from the Beginning, which I recommend both as an excellent book in general, and because towards the end he addresses topics like racial intelligence, and even addresses the controversy around the book The Bell Curve. He's great, and contains a few footnotes that you can follow, one of which is in my Amazon wishlist, Race Unmasked by Michael Yudell. Currently reading Adam Cohen's Imbeciles, which talks about the eugenics movement in America, which is obviously related, although it's more focused on the legal logistics rather than the science and ideology (so far!). Sitting on the shelf is James Whitman's Hitler's American Model, which I'm looking forward to.

For a more fun and accessible take on the topic, ContraPoints is wonderful.

Disclaimer: I do not normally condone the presence of Learns^TM in this sub, but this seemed like a special case. We now return to our previously scheduled programming of philosophy memes.

This is a scary read (or listen, if you’re partial to a bit of audible) - Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/0691172420/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i_UliyCb8RNEFYY

Lots of prominent Americans liked Hitler, including Ford and Disney and Lindbergh. Hitler liked America's segregationist laws too: Hitler's American Model. His private train was actually originally named Amerika.

>scruples

 

>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.

https://www.amazon.com/Hitlers-American-Model-United-States/dp/0691172420

 

America was "founded" through genocide and built with slavery.

I'm not the person you are replying to, so no sourcing for their claim, but I can tell you that the Nazis were also extremely inspired by America not just Sweden. Hitler praised America numerous times in "Mein Kampf".

Here is an excerpt from a great New Yorker Article and I would really encourage you to read it. It also includes a good book recommedation, I read it as part of my studies and while it is not exactly academic literature, it is an accurate page turner.

>The Nazis idolized many aspects of American society: the cult of sport, Hollywood production values, the mythology of the frontier. From boyhood on, Hitler devoured the Westerns of the popular German novelist Karl May. In 1928, Hitler remarked, approvingly, that white settlers in America had “gunned down the millions of redskins to a few hundred thousand.” When he spoke of Lebensraum, the German drive for “living space” in Eastern Europe, he often had America in mind.

>Among recent books on Nazism, the one that may prove most disquieting for American readers is James Q. Whitman’s “Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law” (Princeton). On the cover, the inevitable swastika is flanked by two red stars. Whitman methodically explores how the Nazis took inspiration from American racism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He notes that, in “Mein Kampf,” Hitler praises America as the one state that has made progress toward a primarily racial conception of citizenship, by “excluding certain races from naturalization.” Whitman writes that the discussion of such influences is almost taboo, because the crimes of the Third Reich are commonly defined as “the nefandum, the unspeakable descent into what we often call ‘radical evil.’ ” But the kind of genocidal hatred that erupted in Germany had been seen before and has been seen since. Only by stripping away its national regalia and comprehending its essential human form do we have any hope of vanquishing it.

I added the emphasis myself, here are the relevant links (can't properly format in mobile):

Article:
https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2018/04/30/how-american-racism-influenced-hitler

Book:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/0691172420/?tag=thneyo0f-20

You cannot get more American than being racist.

The Union rehabilitated the Confederate leaders and put them in power instead of doing what they should have: hanging them all. During reconstruction the first public welfare programs were built and radical experiments in democracy kicked off, but then the ex-Confederate leaders killed that and began Jim Crow. The Confederates may have lost the battle for chattel slavery, but they won the war in racist domination. We are still living with that system, albeit in an advanced and evolved form.

Historian Eric Foner is the best on this topic:

>Lincoln did not live to preside over Reconstruction. That task fell to his successor, Andrew Johnson. Once lionized as a heroic defender of the Constitution against Radical Republicans, Johnson today is viewed by historians as one of the worst presidents to occupy the White House. He was incorrigibly racist, unwilling to listen to criticism and unable to work with Congress. Johnson set up new Southern governments controlled by ex-Confederates. They quickly enacted the Black Codes, laws that severely limited the freed people’s rights and sought, through vagrancy regulations, to force them back to work on the plantations.

Why Reconstruction Matters

His book, Reconstruction: America's Unfinished Revolution, 1863 - 1877 is essential reading.

EDIT: I just remembered hearing an interview with James Q. Whitman, American lawyer and Ford Foundation Professor of Comparative and Foreign Law at Yale University on how the Nazis emulated the United States:

>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.

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0691172420/leftbusinessobseA

Interview with the author: http://shout.lbo-talk.org/lbo/RadioArchive/2017/17_05_25.mp3

> Hitlers' eugenics

Based on US eugenics and race policies, tbf. See: Hitler's American Model.

Hitler was most certainly influenced by ideas of Biological Evolution. He was principally influenced by the American Eugenics Movement and often cited the racial injustices in America as both an example and justification for the equally vile and atrocious actions he sanctioned or directed in the interest of "Lebenraum" — that is, living space for the natural, German race.

>"At present, there exists one State which manifests at least some modest attempts that show a better appreciation of how things ought to be done in this matter. It is not, however, in our model, German Republic, but in the U.S.A., that efforts are made to conform at least partly to the counsels of commonsense. By refusing immigrants to enter there if they are in a bad state of health, and by excluding certain races from the right to become naturalized as citizens, they have begun to introduce principles similar to those on which we wish to ground the People's State." — Mein Kampf, Volume Two - The National Socialist Movement
Chapter III: Subjects and Citizens.

Hitler's adoration of American Eugenics and Race Laws, which were themselves founded on social and practical applications of the Darwinian Model of Evolution is undeniable.

I would also recommend that you read, "Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law", James Whitman.

Here's a truly interesting blog on the matter of the continued prevalence of exceptionalism in America.

It is unfortunate that the dark side of Darwin's theory, played out in history, is rarely discussed among atheists and evolutionists. Darwin's theory is praised with little thought as what it produces when applied in real life.

Unchecked, Social Darwinism has profound social implications — it results in genocides, abortion, discrimination, forced sterilizations, marriage regulation, destruction of the unfit, racism, hatred — the opposite of everything the golden rule teaches us, that is, to "love your neighbour as you love yourself" and "to be kind to strangers in need".

This is echoed in a piece produced by History Hit, "Social Darwinism in Nazi Germany", where it is cited,

>"Charles Darwin's Origin of Species revolutionized accepted thought about biology. Despite being a highly universal theory, it is widely accepted now that the Darwinian view of the world does not transfer effectively to every element of life."

...

>"The most infamous instance of Social Darwinism in action is in the genocidal policies of the Nazi German Government in the 1930-1940s.

>It was openly embraced as promoting the notion that the strongest should naturally prevail and was a key feature of Nazi propaganda films..."

Hopefully, you will consider all of the evidence available that shows that when Darwin's theory of evolution is actively applied as social policy it results in nothing short of racism. On this basis I posed my proposition that racism, in all of its forms, can never hope to be eliminated from our social constructs as long as we continue to give a voice to Darwin's racist thought.

More History:

Europe: A History

Europe: European History

The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914

The Iran-Iraq War

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

They Can Live in the Desert but Nowhere Else": A History of the Armenian Genocide

Postmodernism and academic nonsense:

The Sokal Hoax: The Sham That Shook the Academy

Beyond the Hoax: Science, Philosophy and Culture

Fools, Frauds and Firebrands: Thinkers of the New Left

More Politics:

A World in Disarray: American Foreign Policy and the Crisis of the Old Order

Human Nature/ Evolution:

The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

On Human Nature


Clinical Psychology:

Introduction to Clinical Psychology (8th Edition) I'm not trained in psychology but I was told this one was quite good.

Ok, that's enough...


edit: double entry removed + sorting