Earlier quoted context omitted.
I took “looked to American...laws for inspiration” not to mean they got the idea to care about racial purity from America (it was globally a common idea for millenia before the Nazis, and remains common today) but that, in terms of concrete policy to realize those pre-existing concernd, the racial laws of the US at the time were among the sources they consulted for ideas.
without any sort of concrete evidence that the national socialists were actively modeling their policies after US policy, I have no reason to believe this either. Two countries can have backwards policies without one having been "inspiration" for the other.
http://www.sfgate.com/opinion/article/Eugenics-and-the-Nazis...
> During the '20s, Carnegie Institution eugenic scientists cultivated deep personal and professional relationships with Germany's fascist eugenicists. In "Mein Kampf," published in 1924, Hitler quoted American eugenic ideology and openly displayed a thorough knowledge of American eugenics. "There is today one state," wrote Hitler, "in which at least weak beginnings toward a better conception (of immigration) are noticeable. Of course, it is not our model German Republic, but the United States."
> Hitler proudly told his comrades just how closely he followed the progress of the American eugenics movement. "I have studied with great interest," he told a fellow Nazi, "the laws of several American states concerning prevention of reproduction by people whose progeny would, in all probability, be of no value or be injurious to the racial stock."
> Hitler even wrote a fan letter to American eugenics leader Madison Grant, calling his race-based eugenics book, "The Passing of the Great Race," his "bible."