How Germany handles teaching about their shameful past...

[Pluvious]

Seems like a good time to point this out…

#JustSaying

Link to tweet

[Hoyt]

1. Great point. Hope Democrats make that point in upcoming elections.

[madaboutharry]

2. The problem is that republicans don't seem

to want to admit that slavery was shameful.

And if they would say that it was, I bet their fingers would be crossed behind their back.

[thomski64]

3. Include the Trail of Tears.

Wounded knee and COUNTLESS
more

[dweller]

4. The nazis there are few

since they’ve all come here


✌🏻

[UncleTomsEvilBrother]

5. Let's face it, though...

...for the most part, Germans were embarrassed and humiliated because of Hitler's actions, while in the United States, we were not wholly ashamed of our racist past. The rebel/confederate flag, the emblem of hatred that has terrorized American citizens in the form of Jim Crow, red lining, voter suppression, police killings does not have the impact on Americans like the Nazi flags have on mainstream Germans.


The analogy we are trying to make from that tweet falls short when a country allows a known racist become President of the United States.

[soldierant]

10. Why bring up

Woodrow Wilson?

Yes, I know that's not who you meant. But apparently they are like potato chips. Can't stop at just one.

[niyad]

6. Exactly.

[Tree Lady]

7. I heard they have little monuments and kids shoes

All over the place to remind people we will never be like this again.

[kskiska]

8. I was in Berlin a number of years ago and was surprised

to see large blowup photos in street displays of the rubble of the city at the end of the war and a huge memorial for the Jews who died. (I had also visited Dauchau.) A couple of years ago my hometown in Connecticut was pressured to remove a WPA mural depicting a New Orleans riverside showing passengers debarking from a riverboat, and a woman passenger was followed by two black children carrying suitcases. People wanted it removed because they thought it represented slavery. We don't seem to own our history the way other cultures do. It has to be hidden away.

[summer_in_TX]

9. Everywhere some war-related event happened during WWII

a plaque is displayed to describe what happened there.

On the Media had an episode contrasting how the US handles it with details of how Germany dealt and deals with the Holocaust and remembering their past.

[fierywoman]

11. My German friend told me they count their votes by hand.

[LoveTheDU]

12. Berlin

If you have an opportunity to visit, go there
Incredible public displays of the atrocities so no one forgets and children are educated
Holocaust museums are free and welcoming
The footprint of the Berlin Wall is preserved throughout the city
And it's a beautiful and welcoming place to visit! It's not all doom and gloom - wonderful restaurants and plazas and people!

[Skittles]

13. Germany has been outstanding

they have adopted a stance of NEVER FORGET

[Novara]

14. I'm thinking there are plenty of people who wold love to re-establish slavery

There are plenty of assholes who thought enslaved people had it good because they had shelter and meals.

Seriously.

These are the motherfuckers who think white children have to somehow be shielded from the truth. They're not afraid their kid will feel bad; they're afraid their kid will come home from school and ask why their parents are racist assholes.

[DFW]

15. Germany had some help from us, but also from some sensible Germans

The seed of the EU was planted when Adenauer and De Gaulle (who spoke fluent German) got together after the war and brainstormed as to what could be done so their two countries would never go to war against each other again. The idea now seems so obvious: integrate them economically so closely that they would practically exist as neighboring provinces of a bigger union. Travel between France and Germany is now no more complicated than travel between New Hampshire and Vermont.

Germany was in ruins after the war. They remain today one of the more pacifist-minded countries in Europe. NEVER that again. My daughters were both born there and grew up there. They attended the Anne Frank elementary school, so named by the townspeople as a total break from the immediate past, when the building had been the local headquarters of the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo). Anne Frank's life was, and remains, part of the school's curriculum.

[Caliman73]

16. The United States has never had to confront its problems with White Supremacy.

Germany, led by Hitler (or coerced) waged war against what they perceived as "inferior races" including Slavs and Southern Europeans. Remember that they did not want to fight with Britain because they thought racially, they were equal.

Germany was ground down and basically destroyed. Their major cities were rubble by the end of the war. Certainly they could have just rebuilt and moved on, but Europe, the USSR, and the US weren't really going to just let them act as if nothing happened. To their credit, they definitely internalized and continued to deal with what lead them to war.


The United States has had a different historical path. Other than the Civil War, we have never had war waged on US soil that destroyed large swaths of the country and the destruction in the Civil War was internal. While there have always been anti-racists in the US and some of the founders were abolitionists before it was popular, the predominant attitudes were of White Supremacy. Even some who opposed Slavery because of the inhumanity, still believed Black people to be inferior. The Civil War was fought over Slavery and Secession, NOT to address racial inequality or White Supremacy. People like to portray the Civil War as "good v evil" and paint the South as the place where problems with race were played out. Unfortunately problems with race played, and continue to play out all over the United States. We had problems with Indigenous people whom Thomas Jefferson regarded as "almost White" but for their inferior culture. We displaced people from lands they had been on for thousands of years. We tried to wipe out their culture by banning their practices and forcibly taking their children to "civilize" them. We dehumanized Mexicans to take land in the South West and West. It was called "Manifest Destiny" and "The White Man's Burden".

We have never been made to account for our attitudes and actions. Anyone who tries to do so is marginalized aggressively by Conservatives or told "now is not the time" or "you shouldn't be divisive" by everyone.

[IcyPeas]

17. Tom Cotton said slavery was a necessary evil.

Wonder if he thinks the same about the holocaust.

[Pluvious]

18. Or if it's wrong to teach their children about it (nt)