American Exceptionalism: Why the Nazis Looked up to US Race Laws

Why did the Nazis admire America? Yale University law professor James Q. Whitman started out asking why Hitler in Mein Kampf, and other Nazis in the 1930s, referred to American legal precedents on numerous occasions. What he discovered in the archives surprised him, and may shock readers of his book - or any American. Hitler's American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law, raises existentially uncomfortable questions about the sources of racial laws in Nazi Germany and the US. This season of the Tel Aviv Review is made possible by The Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, which promotes humanistic, democratic, and liberal values in the social discourse in Israel.