It's a bit of an aside, but I have such respect for you Germans when it comes to owning up to past transgressions. In my experience, when the topic of WWII has

It's a bit of an aside, but I have such respect for you Germans when it comes to owning up to past transgressions. In my experience, when the topic of WWII has come up, it's always been a matter of, "Yes, we fucked up. Now, how do we prevent it from happening again?" My ancestors came to the USA after the Civil War, so _I_ have no real stake in this, but I married into a family from the midwest/south who has been in the US for many generations and I'm regularly floored when I hear people make claims about how the Civil War was actually about states' rights (to own human beings ...) and such. It seems like these people are still mostly concerned with trying to save face, as opposed to admitting that their forbears _royally_ screwed up and trying to learn and adapt from the episode.