Hitler modeled Mein Kampf directly on an American segregationist’s book

Evidence

In 1924, Adolf Hitler was jailed for an attempted revolution. He used the time in prison—and Madison Grant’s book—to write his magnum opus, Mein Kampf. “The highest aim of human existence is … the conservation of race,” Hitler famously wrote. The Nazi czar later thanked Grant for writing The Passing of the Great Race, which Hitler called “my Bible.” — Ibram X. Kendi, Stamped from the Beginning, 814

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s standing interest in the international export of American racist theory; parallels how eugenics crossed borders in other fascist contexts.
• SHARE: Worth sending to anyone working on the American roots of European fascism — the concrete Grant-to-Hitler textual lineage is a striking, narrow fact.
• CANDY: A striking, easily-retellable fact: Hitler read an American lawyer’s book in prison and called it his Bible.