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“Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”—George Santayana
I read copiously about World War II, the Nazi atrocities and the American, British and other military and civilian heroes who prevailed over forces of evil in the world 80 years ago.
The German people today are much different from those in the regime of that time. One of the things I most respect about them is that they do not run away from their past; rather, they display it so that they, and those who visit, will see with clarity the truth of what happened in those bleak days and commit to not repeating it.
At 21, I was deeply moved by a visit to the former Nazi concentration camp at Dachau, near Munich. A sign at the entrance said, “Nie Wieder” or “Never Again.”
Dachau opened in 1933 and served as the model for myriad other concentration/extermination camps. Twenty years after the war, it was opened as a memorial and museum.
Years later, I visited Nuremburg, the birthplace of Nazism. An ostentatious building intended to be Hitler’s version of the Roman Forum has been converted into a museum featuring the development of the repressive Nazi regime over a period of years and the darkest aspects of that regime. The Germans are insistent about remembering their past and sharing it with the world, seemingly to deter Germany, or any country, from turning toward racism and totalitarianism.
The fact that the German people so readily share the lessons of their past is a positive thing. It reminds the rest of us to watch carefully for signs of bias turning into active discrimination and worse, and to guard against the mistreatment of “the other” by any in our population.
With that backdrop, I am concerned about some of the comments I’ve heard recently from U.S. leaders, expressing concern about the Smithsonian Institution’s showcasing certain negative aspects of U.S. history. President Trump says there is too much focus on slavery at the National Museum of African-American History & Culture and that he wishes to focus only on the positive aspects of our history.
Contrary to the public expressions of those who want to see less of this painful history and who fear that it makes our country look bad, I believe that revealing the truth demonstrates how far we have come as a nation since the days of slavery. It also serves as a reminder of a place to which we don’t wish to return.
But as in most disputes, there is a kernel of truth here. I hear from other sources that, over the years, the Smithsonian might have skewed some of its exhibits toward an unnecessarily critical view of our history.
I suspect the desire to de-emphasize the negative aspects of American history is at least in part a backlash against the 1619 Project, a collection of essays featured in The New York Times in 2019. It claimed that the American Revolution was fought to preserve slavery, that Abraham Lincoln—who actually freed the slaves— was the equivalent of a white supremacist, and so on. Despite its significant and offensive misrepresentations of the nation’s past, it was widely celebrated by the liberal press.
Excesses at one end of the spectrum lead to excesses at the other end. Much like the extreme anti-DEI backlash occasioned by prior liberal excesses, the Smithsonian kerfuffle isn’t necessary or wise. It is, though, not surprising.
But slavery? There was nothing good about it. We must own it and fully own up to it.•
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Daniels is a retired partner of Krieg DeVault LLP, a former U.S. Attorney and assistant U.S. attorney general and former president of the Sagamore Institute. Send comments to [email protected].
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This article though well intended is factually inaccurate when it comes to the German population understanding of past atrocities. Half my family is from Germany due to a marriage of my grandfather to a German woman after WW1. We travel to each other’s county’s often and communicate regular. We are amazed of how little the German people know about their own history. Until the 1970’s it was illegal to present the subject in German schools. They often get their information from the west side of the Atlantic.