BOOK REVIEW: S. Jonathan WIESEN on James Q. WHITMAN, Hitler's American Model (American Historical Review, CXXIII (2018), No. 3 (June)

(image source: Princeton UP)

S. Jonathan Wiesen (Southern Illinois University Carbondale) reviewed James Q. Whitman recent's book Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law (Princeton: Princeton UP, 2017).

First paragraph:

The Nazis were obsessed with the United States. They were intrigued by the supposed crassness of American mass culture and the deficiencies of democracy, and they paid particular attention to race and racism. As recent scholarship has shown, both party ideologues and scholars in the Third Reich considered the treatment of African Americans and Jews in the U.S., and they were in regular conversation with American eugenicists, who pioneered the forced sterilization programs adopted by several U.S. states. What is less known, and what James Q. Whitman impressively addresses in Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, is the extent to which American race laws actually influenced Nazi policies toward Germany’s minorities.

Read more on the Oxford Journals website.
More information on the book with the publisher.