The American Basis for Nazi Policy: A United States-Third Reich Comparative Analysis of Colonial Expansion

Prior to World War Two, Nazi Germany was searching for a strategy for German expansion. The United States’ effective strategy of settler colonialism, centered on the genocide of indigenous populations, provided a framework for how Nazi Germany aimed to conquer and eventually settle Eastern Europe during and after the Second World War. Additionally, American Jim Crow laws provided inspiration for systems of racial hierarchy in Germany and regions under German control. These systems, characterized by the Nuremberg Laws, served as precursors to the Holocaust.