The Nazis and the American South in the 1930s: A Mirror Image?

Abstract

investigated the relationship between Nazi Germany and the American South. Although much has been published on the activities of the German-American Bund and on Nazi propaganda efforts in the United States, no scholarly work has examined the relationship between the Nazi party and the American South in the 1920s and 1930s or asked whether Nazi racial views were appreciated in the South.2 This is particularly surprising in light of Shearer Davis Bowman's innovative comparative study of antebellum southern planters and early nineteenth-century Prussian landed elites. Only a few studies even touch on the issue of the relationship between the South and Nazi Germany. An interesting article by John Haag deals with the impact of Gone with the Wind in the Third Reich, and a chapter in a recent book by John T. Kneebone-Southern Liberal Journalists and the Issue of Race-focuses primarily on the reaction of five liberal southern