Still, it feels a bit different. The 9/11 memorial is honoring the good Americans killed by the bad terrorists. But the inscriptions in the Reichstag are definitely not honoring the good Germans killed by bad Soviets. They were, after all, whether willingly or not, fighting for the Nazis. But neither are they honoring the Soviets. They were fighting for Stalin, for the Stasi, for Berlin families being separated by the Wall. It’s hardly a memorial at all. If there’s any moral to be taken, then it is that history is, in the end, not about the good and the bad, but about Alexey from Pskov and Hans from Göttingen, maybe neither of them a particularly good person, but both of them being swept alike by the uncaring forces of history.
Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the Rape of Nanking are generally considered atrocities rather than military victories. They aren’t shameful or embarrasing to remember (for the victims.) Pearl Harbor was an early defeat in a war the US eventually won handily.
A better comparison would be if the US had a memorial to the time the British burned the White House during the war of 1812. Maybe they do, but if so I haven’t heard of it. I guess this is a test we could do!
That somehow doesn’t feel quite right—something of a different class of things, unless you’re saying that the general American perception now is we deserved the attack.
I would think perhaps the Vietnam War memorial might be a better case—still not quite the same (I might even go as far as to say something of a mirror image).
Point taken.
Still, it feels a bit different. The 9/11 memorial is honoring the good Americans killed by the bad terrorists. But the inscriptions in the Reichstag are definitely not honoring the good Germans killed by bad Soviets. They were, after all, whether willingly or not, fighting for the Nazis. But neither are they honoring the Soviets. They were fighting for Stalin, for the Stasi, for Berlin families being separated by the Wall. It’s hardly a memorial at all. If there’s any moral to be taken, then it is that history is, in the end, not about the good and the bad, but about Alexey from Pskov and Hans from Göttingen, maybe neither of them a particularly good person, but both of them being swept alike by the uncaring forces of history.
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That doesn’t seem in the same ballpark to me.
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Nagasaki and Hiroshima and the Rape of Nanking are generally considered atrocities rather than military victories. They aren’t shameful or embarrasing to remember (for the victims.) Pearl Harbor was an early defeat in a war the US eventually won handily.
A better comparison would be if the US had a memorial to the time the British burned the White House during the war of 1812. Maybe they do, but if so I haven’t heard of it. I guess this is a test we could do!
That somehow doesn’t feel quite right—something of a different class of things, unless you’re saying that the general American perception now is we deserved the attack.
I would think perhaps the Vietnam War memorial might be a better case—still not quite the same (I might even go as far as to say something of a mirror image).
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