4.6 • 7.7K Ratings
🗓️ 16 August 2020
⏱️ 51 minutes
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Nieman contrasts how Germans have come to terms with The Third Reich and how Americans have processed slavery, the Civil War, Jim Crow, lynching, and systemic racism.
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0:00.0 | Hey, everybody. We got a great one today, you know, for a change. My guest is Susan Neiman, |
0:13.2 | author of Learning from the Germans. And it is a fascinating book because it looks at how the Germans process the Third Reich, World War II, |
0:24.3 | and of course the Holocaust, and then compares that to how the South, and to a great extent our |
0:31.3 | entire nation has dealt with slavery and the Civil War and Jim Crow and lynching. |
0:39.5 | In an Atlantic monthly article recently, Dr. Neiman wrote, |
0:44.3 | as an American Jew from the South who has lived in Berlin for decades, |
0:50.5 | I've been asked whether Americans in contemplating a plantation home, Confederate statue, |
0:57.2 | or some other monument to our nation's slave past should emulate the way Germans treat Nazi |
1:05.0 | memorials, to which I respond, there aren't any. |
1:12.0 | You know, at a time when the president of the United States is for some reason |
1:17.2 | defending the Confederate flag and statues to the traders who seceded from our union |
1:24.2 | and went to war against the United States of America for one reason and one reason |
1:30.4 | only to protect slavery. |
1:33.7 | I thought it would be a great time to learn how we can learn from the Germans. |
1:40.2 | Now we will pick up my conversation with Dr. Neiman, talking about how the West Germans were a lot slower to accept that their country had committed, perhaps the greatest crimes ever committed against humanity, a lot slower to process that than the East Germans. |
2:03.2 | One thing I want to ask, because you don't talk a lot about Hitler in the book. |
2:09.0 | And I think that most people are just fascinated with the Nazis and fascinated with Hitler. |
2:17.3 | For example, right after they lost the war, Germany is just devastated, right? |
2:23.7 | They're living in rubble. |
2:25.3 | Right. |
2:26.1 | They're starving. |
2:28.1 | I'm thinking they've been saying Heil Hitler since 1933. |
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