The Atlantic

The Atlantic reviews a book, James Whitman’s “Hitler’s American Model,” that explores how Nazi Germany developed its racial laws.

It turned to the U.S. for sources, among them Arkansas.

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Especially significant were the writings of the German lawyer Heinrich Krieger, “the single most important figure in the Nazi assimilation of American race law,” who spent the 1933–34 academic year in Fayetteville as an exchange student at the University of Arkansas School of Law. Seeking to deploy historical and legal knowledge in the service of Aryan racial purity, Krieger studied a range of overseas race regimes, including contemporary South Africa, but discovered his foundation in American law. His deeply researched writings about the United States began with articles in 1934, some concerning American Indians and others pursuing an overarching assessment of U.S. race legislation—each a precursor to his landmark 1936 book, Das Rassenrecht in den Vereingten Staaten (“Race Law in the United States”).

Whitman’s “smoking gun” is the transcript of a June 5, 1934, conference of leading German lawyers gathered to exchange ideas about how best to operationalize a racist regime. The record reflects how the most extreme among them, who relied on Krieger’s synoptic scholarship, were especially drawn to American legal codes based on white supremacy.

The Atlantic writes that the topic is important. It’s worth remembering that, during the Third Reich, about half the Democrats in Congress came from Jim Crow states and neither major party sought to limit the race laws so admired by the German, the article says.

Some might argue that race remains a dominant issue in those Jim Crow states today. Obamascare, anyone?

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Note that Guy Lancaster wrote a review of this same book and noted the UA connection in a brief review for the Arkansas Times earlier this year. Krieger’s time at Arkansas has been mentioned frequently in academic work over the years.

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