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over 64,000 individuals were forcibly sterilized under eugenic legislation in the United
States...

After the eugenics movement was well established in the United States, it spread to
Germany. California eugenicists began producing literature promoting eugenics and
sterilization and sending it overseas to German scientists and medical professionals. By
1933, California had subjected more people to forceful sterilization than all other U.S.
states combined. The forced sterilization program engineered by the Nazis was partly
inspired by California's.

The Rockefeller Foundation helped develop and fund various German eugenics programs,
including the one that Josef Mengele worked in before he went to Auschwitz.

Upon returning from Germany in 1934, where more than 5,000 people per month were
being forcibly sterilized, the California eugenics leader C. M. Goethe bragged to a
colleague:

"You will be interested to know that your work has played a powerful part in shaping the
opinions of the group of intellectuals who are behind Hitler in this epoch-making
program. Everywhere I sensed that their opinions have been tremendously stimulated by
American thought . . . I want you, my dear friend, to carry this thought with you for the
rest of your life, that you have really jolted into action a great government of 60 million
people."

Eugenics researcher Harry H. Laughlin often bragged that his Model Eugenic
Sterilization laws had been implemented in the 1933 Nuremberg racial hygiene laws. In
1936, Laughlin was invited to an award ceremony at Heidelberg University in Germany
(scheduled on the anniversary of Hitler's 1934 purge of Jews from the Heidelberg faculty),
to receive an honorary doctorate for his work on the "science of racial cleansing". Due to
financial limitations, Laughlin was unable to attend the ceremony and had to pick it up
from the Rockefeller Institute. Afterwards, he proudly shared the award with his
colleagues, remarking that he felt that it symbolized the "common understanding of
German and American scientists of the nature of eugenics."

After 1945, however, historians began to attempt to portray the US eugenics movement
as distinct and distant from Nazi eugenics.
[Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugenics_in_the_United_States]

In 1923 Popular Science Monthly featured an article on Eugenics.