Today I am going to take you on a brief excursion to the American South where I had occasion to visit recently. You don't visit the South without asking: Will the South rise again? Has the Civil War ever ended?
I'll give you a couple of Southern glimpses.
Visiting the American South as a German-born American can be very informative - and at the same time, painful and unsettling. Wherever I went, I was surprised - surprised by how deep the feelings run in Southerners of having been hurt and humiliated by the Civil War defeat, and of still being misunderstood because of that bloody fratricidal war. American-Germans, so meek and so cowed, can learn from these proud Southern people.
It is even more amazing to experience the pride so many Southerners still express about brave battles fought and won (or lost) over 140 years ago! The names of Southern heroes who were brilliant tacticians like Robert E. Lee, or exceptional cavalry men like Nathan Bedford Forrest, crop up in conversations as if these men were virtual contemporaries. It is an experience not easily forgotten!
One would be hard-pressed to find a modern-day German to remember, much less talk about, in glowing terms about a German or Prussian general in the wars against Napoleon or in the Franco-Prussian war, equally distant in time. No life-size equestrian monuments in parks of modern Germany remind Germany's citizens, especially its youth, of the feats and accomplishments of a Fieldmarshall Bluecher at Waterloo, for instance.
In Memphis, Tennessee, there is not only a magnificent statue of Nathan Bedford Forrest, but it stands in its very own park surrounded by stately, magnificent oak trees. Historical markers tell all passersby of the heroism of this exceptional Civil War hero. Another marker on Third Street explains his story further, for there he owned a house. You visit, and you shiver. You stand on sacred ground.
How real and how important these Southern heroes are to many to this very day can best be illustrated by a little poignant story a friend relayed to me:
He and three other people were sitting in the waiting room in a lawyer's office across the Nathan Bedford Forrest Park, exactly where we took some pictures. There they could see the historical marker from a window. As they bantered back and forth about Forrest's role in the Civil War, a white-haired, dignified gentleman, possibly a lawyer in the firm, happened to pass through the waiting room. As he passed by this little group, he said to no one in particular, almost as a reflex action: "Only Yankees would call him Nathan!!!"- and more than firmly closed the door!
This little story speaks for itself. A German would be hard-pressed to find someone to come to the defense of Bluecher, know of his military prowess, or know anything about his policies of more than a century ago. When a German asks a Southerner with a knowledge of the Civil War and its aftermath about details, it becomes clear that the South suffered much the same deprivations and deliberately planned hardships that come along with defeat on the battlefield and subsequent military occupation that Germany experienced. There are so many parallels!
What happened to the South after the Civil War defeat feels like an echo of what happened to the German people with its period of humiliating "re-education"imposed by the Allied victors after World War II. Like in the South only 80 years before, the ruling cultural, military and political elite also found themselves imprisoned, outlawed, and prevented from holding and exercising any power. The laws were as draconian in the South as they were in Germany four generations later with laws imposed by the victors, by statutes and by occupation decrees under the heel of military governors who ruled over military districts not unlike the American, British, French or Russian zones of occupation in post-1945 Germany.
In chilling similarity, military commanders after the South was defeated appointed Southern traitors as their lackeys to rule it over their countrymen. Many of these appointees in the South were former slaves called Freedmen. Many appointees in Germany after 1945 and still today, as we all know, were former Communists and Jews who had fled Germany.
According to Southerners today, almost 90 percent of the eligible white population were disenfranchised and stripped of their civil rights and therefore could not hold office. In Germany today, no National Socialists could run for office - from dog-catcher to postman to teacher to professor. All those jobs were off limits to them - until they went through the humiliating process of "de-nazification proceedings"- having to swear off any and all ideals they had believed in and for which so many of their comrades died. Many who survived had to pay stiff fines or even serve prison term until they were accepted into "normal"society. Ration coupons were denied to them and to their families, which spelled death for some and starvation for many, many others.
Similarly, the policy of no food importation to the South after the defeat paralleled Allied policies of not allowing food parcels and donated food being sent to the Germans after the defeat of World War II.
There are many historical parallels, and it is time that the South learns about Germany today - and vice versa. Post-war Germans share with the post-war Southerners a rich field for Revisionist historians to explore, and for ordinary, decent people to reflect on - for in today already walks tomorrow. Which shall be your Thought for the Day.
Ingrid