Hitler’s primary geopolitical goal was Lebensraum (living space)—the conquest and colonization of Eastern Europe. To justify this, he explicitly used the American expansion to the West as his mental model.

The "Wild East": Hitler and Heinrich Himmler frequently referred to the Slavic territories of Eastern Europe as Germany’s "Wild East" or the "California of Europe."

Pop Culture Influence: Hitler grew up obsessed with the Wild West adventure novels of German author Karl May. Even during World War II, Hitler kept these books in his personal library and recommended them to his generals, viewing the American Indian Wars as a tactical and ideological masterclass in how a "superior race" tames a continent.

Colonial Emulation: In his private monologues, Hitler praised the efficiency with which white settlers cleared the American continent of its indigenous population through warfare, forced displacement, and starvation, leaving what he called a "modest remnant" on reservations. He intended to treat the Slavic and Jewish populations of the East exactly as the Americans had treated Native Americans.

Legal Precedents: Jim Crow and Immigration Acts

When the Nazi Party took power, they tasked German legal experts with creating a framework to strip Jews of their citizenship and criminalize intermarriage. In 1935, a delegation of 45 Nazi lawyers traveled to the United States to study American law.

The Nuremberg Laws: The resulting Nuremberg Laws were heavily informed by American statutes. Nazi lawyers meticulously analyzed Jim Crow segregation laws, state-level anti-miscegenation laws (which banned interracial marriage based on "blood fractions"), and the strict quotas of the U.S. Johnson-Reed Immigration Act of 1924.

Too Radically Severe: In a bizarre historical irony documented by legal scholar James Q. Whitman, some Nazi lawyers actually found certain American legal concepts—such as the "one-drop rule" defining Black identity—to be too harsh for Germany's initial legal frameworks, opting instead for a more complex system based on the number of Jewish grandparents