10 No. 77 JUSTICE he 1935 Nuremberg Laws are considered a bedrock of Nazi Germany’s anti-Jewish policies. In his opening address at the International Military Tribunal at Nuremberg, the chief U.S. prosecutor, Justice Robert H. Jackson, referred to them as the “infamous Nuremberg decrees of September 15, 1935.”1 Ignored by most Holocaust historians, however, is the fact that these laws were inspired by and to a large extent cribbed from racial laws then in effect in numerous southern states of the United States. To place both the significance and the origins of the Nuremberg Laws in their historical context, one must bear in mind that the antisemitism of Nazi Germany did not come to the fore in a vacuum or out of nowhere. Rather, it was a malignant but eminently predictable byproduct, a predisposition as it were, of a state of mind, of racist attitudes that were prevalent elsewhere, including the United States. When Adolf Hitler became chancellor of Germany on January 30, 1933, he did not have in place a novel intellectual or political framework to enact new — that is, previously non-existent — antisemitic legislation. It is in this context that one must consider the large volume of Nazi anti-Jewish laws and regulations starting on April 7, 1933, with the Law for the Restoration of the Civil Service which excluded Jews, as well as those considered “politically unreliable,” from the German civil service. Parenthetically, one should note that de facto anti-Jewish measures had already been implemented by then, but starting in April 1933, they became one of the most prominent features of Nazi German legislation. To understand the evolution of antisemitism as a Nazi ideology, one must first focus on a conspiratorial Russian forgery, The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, and its impact on Hitler, not directly but as the result of its dissemination by the American industrialist and automobile manufacturer Henry Ford. Portions of The Protocols, a 100 percent fictional depiction of a supposedly secret Jewish plot to dominate the world, first appeared in a Russian newspaper in 1903 and it was then published as a chapter in a book by Sergei Nilus, a Russian antisemitic mystic. The contents of The Protocols were promoted by Ford in a series of virulently antisemitic art, first in his Dearborn Independent beginning in 1920 and then in a book, The International Jew: The World’s Foremost Problem. It is probable that Hitler was first exposed to The Protocols through a German translation of Ford’s book. The combination of The Protocols and Ford’s virulent, relentless antisemitic agitation posed a significant enough problem for American Jews that ten major American Jewish organizations under the auspices of the American Jewish Committee issued a joint statement on November 30, 1920, published in The New York Times the following day, that “condemned” The Protocols “as a forgery.” Most relevant here is the following excerpt from that statement: During the past six months there have been sent forth weekly in Henry Ford’s organ, the Dearborn Independent, attacks of extraordinary virulence upon the Jews. These assaults upon the honor of the Jewish people are all founded on The Protocols and on the discredited literature of Russian and German anti-Semitism, inspired by the minions of autocracy. Parrot-like, they repeat the abominable charges that can only appeal to the credulity of a stunted intelligence — charges long since conceded to be unfounded by all fair-minded men.2 The American Roots of the 1935 Nuremberg Laws* Menachem Z. Rosensaft * This article is adapted from a lecture delivered by the author at Cornell Law School, June 7, 2024, as part of Cornell’s 2024 University Wide Alumni Reunion. 1. 2 TRIAL OF THE MAJOR WAR CRIMINALS BEFORE THE INTERNATIONAL MILITARY TRIBUNAL 119 (1947) (Proceedings Nov. 21, 1945). 2. “Jews Denounce ‘Protocols of Zion,’” N.Y. TIMES, Dec. 1, 1920, at 19. T
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