Heinrich Krieger and the Nazi Vision of the United States

Abstract

On June 5, 1934, seventeen Nazi lawyers, jurists, scholars, and officials met to discuss how Nazi Germany would go about identifying and persecuting their Jewish population. This crucial meeting would lay the foundation for the Nuremberg Laws that were later created and passed in 1935. From the records of this meeting we know that US race laws concerning its black and Indian population was used as a model for the Nazi lawyers and much of the information on US race laws was obtained from research conducted by a Nazi scholar named Heinrich Krieger that was influential during the meeting. Before this meeting Heinrich Krieger had spent a year at the University of Arkansas as a foreign exchange student during the 1933-1934 school year. While in Arkansas Krieger would partake in multiple campus activities and write a seminar paper on Nazi German labor policies as an apologist on behalf of Germany to the US. However while spending time in Arkansas Krieger would begin to notice race relations in the state that would lead him to study US race laws that would be used by Nazi officials to create the Nuremberg laws. This thesis will study the development of Krieger while a student in Arkansas to reveal how Krieger and the Nazi party had no master plan to use the US and its race laws as a model for the Nuremberg laws. Rather by examining Krieger\u27s development from labor scholar to race scholar, we can see how Krieger and Nazi officials were opportunists who came across US race laws and saw its potential. Also, Arkansas and its race laws and race relations will be examined to learn how the state influenced Krieger\u27s research and understanding of US race laws