I'm not sure which side of the fence I am on this.
I know that in Germany, there's a great deal of shame regarding Nazi Germany, such that just about anything connected to it is against the law.
They never want to see it again. As such, I get why people would want to erase it from memorialization.
So I understand why people want to remove stuff from across the South.
On the other hand - history is still who we are. We can't escape it, and whitewashing over it doesn't undo it.
Moreover - there are a lot of Southerners who don't see the Civil War as some kind of fight over repressing blacks.
While slavery had a GREAT deal to do with why the war was waged, ultimately war is waged over resources - most of the time.
The North was screwing the South in almost the same way that England screwed the colonies - and they'd had enough.
If the North had offered a way to wean the South off of slavery - a cruel evil that - without it, the South was economically ruined -
it might have been avoided.
So I get both sides - people want to believe - at least, people I consider - nitwits - want to believe when someone disagrees with them, it simply MUST be because they're racist or stupid.
I don't see that - people don't fight their own brother to the death because they want to be bigots - they fight to the death because they're backed into a corner for survival.
Apples and Oranges.. you can't compare Germany and it's lack of recognition to the Nazi Party and the Southern AMERICANS not getting recognition.
Germany was at war with the world, and attempted to kill every living Jew on the planet.. MOST of what you say isn't their choice to begin with, WE eradicated any Nazi symbology and statues after the war, I even lived in barracks with the statues and reliefs of past heroes and demagogues of their past, the only part missing was the swastikas that were erased or chiseled away.
The Civil War was American v American and part of the reconciliation and reunification of our country had to do with recognizing the enemy as an equal and as a brother. We didn't have war crime tribunals based solely on whose side you were on.. we didn't have mass hangings of generals or POW camp commandants..
Those statues weren't intended to divide a country but to allow the South to retain their glory and their history and allow them to assimilate back into their own country. if I recall correctly even some Northern states have Southern statues present.
BUT lets take this a step further, farther back in time.. The signers of the Declaration of Independence? How many of them owned slaves?? So we edit the document to remove them from it?? Do we go to DC to remove EVERY single one that ever owned a slave from all of our monuments?? DO we remove their plaques from around the pond?
Do we go to Egypt and require them to destroy the Pyramids?? The Sphynx?? They were, after all, built by slaves..
How about the White House??
These men whose statues we are removing were and are Americans.. they graduated from US Military Academies.. They were no less or no more heroes and great strategists than their Northern Brethren. They fought for what they thought was right at THAT time.. we shouldn't, or CAN'T judge them by today's standards and political correctness.