General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: The South was not sufficiently punished after the war [View all]alcibiades_mystery
(36,437 posts)in Japan. Ditto Germany. There was help to rebuild in both cases, but ideological Nazis and Imperial Japanese were hunted down and punished - often with the death penalty. They were put to fucking heel, which should have happened to Nathan Bedford Forrest and the other Confederate terrorists.
The ideology was eradicated forcefully. They were forced to admit they lost, and they were not allowed to keep their ideological apparatus in place. Hirohito was a symbolic wink as the hangings happened en masse. Jefferson Davis was a criminal, period, and should have been punished along with the rest of the leadership. Only the vaguest notion of honor saved Lee, who should have spent 20 years in prison after the war at a minimum. He was a traitor, period.