Now, as a historian of the Nazi era, I am drawn to an even starker contrast, this one between how post-World War II Germany and the post-Civil War United States acknowledge their roles in institutions built upon human suffering. Put simply, in coming to terms with its past, Germany eventually elected to memorialize its victims, while the United States, particularly the South, chose to commemorate not the victims but the institution itself and the society that created it. The one society focuses on the victims, the other the defeated. The United States could learn from Germany’s example.

Source: U.S. put its Silent Sams on pedestals. Germany honored not the defeated but the victims. – The Washington Post