Why America’s Confederate Monuments Can’t be Compared to Hitler and Nazi Germany
The movement to tear down monuments of Confederate leaders in America’s South has continued apace over the past few years and has been given renewed energy in the aftermath of protests following the killing of George Floyd.
Supporters of this movement often point to Germany as an example for the U.S. to follow. World War II had barely ended when the Allies banned the display of the swastika and other Nazi symbols. West Germany enshrined the ban in law in 1949. Nazi officials were buried in unmarked graves, and any statues in their honor were torn down.
Not so in America. The South has over 700 monuments and statues to the Confederacy, a subset of over 1,500 public memorials to those who attempted separation from the Union.
Whether these statues and memorials should be swept out of the public eye is a complicated issue, one that I do not think has a “right” answer — and possibly not even a “best” answer. But we cannot look to Germany as a guiding light in this debate for one simple reason: the Confederacy, the Civil War, Jim Crow, the Civil Rights Movement, and the current racial divisions in our society are steeped in hundreds — hundreds — of years of racism, slavery, and ingrained bigotry in the collective American psyche.
