# Denazification after WWII and Reconstruction after the American Civil War **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [February 25, 2014, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/denazification-after-wwii-and-reconstruction-after-the-american-civil-war/682260 "2014-02-25T22:05:37Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 8\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Hollow\_mask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Hollow\_mask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hollow_mask)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2014, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/denazification-after-wwii-and-reconstruction-after-the-american-civil-war/682260/21 "2014-02-26T04:37:31Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Who had a right to be angry? Lincoln didn’t refuse to run in the south. Southern election boards refused to put his name on ballots. > > And let’s not forget that Southern delegates had also stated they planned on seceding if Douglas was elected. If Douglas was elected ? Don’t you mean Lincoln ? Yes, Lincoln wasn’t on those southern ballots because the South had been clamoring about what his election might bring. Namely the end of the “peculiar institution”(quaint phrase, isn’t it). Sam is right about the various other causes, but it still seems that the slavery question was at the foundation of most, if not all of these. States rights ? Population representation in the House (slaves were three-fifths counted since the constitution), agricultural vs. industrial (why should the north have had to compete with a free-labor south), the cultural and religious differences, and other differences. It really is, as Sam stated, not easy to compare these with the post-WWII occupations. Those were entirely different nations, after all. I still do not know of any conquered foe being allowed to keep and display the flag under which it had lost. ---
**Author:** ![Hollow\_mask](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/6f9a4e/32.png) [@Hollow\_mask](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hollow_mask)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2014, 5:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/denazification-after-wwii-and-reconstruction-after-the-american-civil-war/682260/22 "2014-02-26T05:01:06Z")
As for Iraq, the various Islamist sects continued to do what they have always done; war against each other. I have no Idea how peace or liberty can ever be achieved in such a tribal, backward region of the world. It is as though the modern technological world arrived there bereft of any of the ethical/moral principles the West experienced thru the enlightenment. The Arab states seem stuck in the Middle Ages. This seems to be an ongoing problem at the heart of which lay Islam and which prevents the tolerance needed for anything like Democracy to take root. ---
**Author:** ![Little\_Nemo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/little_nemo/32/3120_2.png) [@Little\_Nemo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Little_Nemo)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2014, 5:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/denazification-after-wwii-and-reconstruction-after-the-american-civil-war/682260/23 "2014-02-26T05:47:51Z")
> [@Hollow\_mask](#): > > If Douglas was elected ? Don’t you mean Lincoln ? States were planning on seceding if either candidate won. Granted, there might have been fewer secessions after a Douglas victory. (Although maybe not. Douglas had strongly denounced secession and announced his full support of Lincoln after South Carolina seceded.) Ironically, all the southern states would have needed to do if Douglas had won was wait. As part of his effort to appease the south, Douglas had chosen Georgian Herschel Johnson as his running mate. And Douglas was a dying man in 1860. He only lived five months past what would have been his inauguration and then Johnson would have become President. ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2014, 7:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/denazification-after-wwii-and-reconstruction-after-the-american-civil-war/682260/24 "2014-02-26T07:02:23Z")
> [@Hollow\_mask](#): > > I can think of no other conflict in history where the vanquished side gets to continue > > to fly their colors. Lots of regional flags in Europe are from the side which lost the war that got that region conquered by a neighbor (sometimes as straight conquest, some as part of succesion conflicts). Drawing a list of those which are not would take less time. ---
**Author:** ![Human\_Action](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/ac91a4/32.png) [@Human\_Action](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Human_Action)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2014, 2:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/denazification-after-wwii-and-reconstruction-after-the-american-civil-war/682260/25 "2014-02-26T14:24:18Z")
> [@Hollow\_mask](#): > > I still do not know of any conquered foe being allowed to keep and display the flag under which it had lost. [Japan?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_Japan) There was a brief period of restrictions on some uses of the flag, but Japan was certainly allowed to keep and display it. [France?](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vichy_France) They retained the same flag while under German occupation. And, of course, banning the Confederate flag would be a non-starter in the U.S., due to the First Amendment. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2014, 4:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/denazification-after-wwii-and-reconstruction-after-the-american-civil-war/682260/26 "2014-02-26T16:04:09Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > I remember this being a big worry in the Iraq war when the 4th mechanized infantry was stalled by Turkish refusal to allow the U.S. to cross over its borders. The worry then was that if the victory came quickly and with only one region of the country exposed to the might of the U.S. military, it would leave the rest of the country in a situation of having ‘lost’ without ever seeing a battle or U.S. military power. That would leave them unbowed and hostile. That is an - interesting way of looking at things. There was no “stalling” of the 4th Infantry Division (Mech) by Turkey; its equipment spent months floating around the Mediterranean prior to the US invasion of Iraq because Bush and Rumsfeld refused to face the reality that they had failed horribly to gain international support for the invasion. Turkey declined to take part in the US invasion or have any part to do with it, the impending US invasion was wildly unpopular amongst the Turkish population, and a final proposed resolution to allow US troops into Turkey was rejected in Turkish Parliament on March 1. Rather than redeploy the 4th Infantry’s equipment to Kuwait as was eventually done, Bush and Rumsfeld insisted on allowing it to float around the Mediterranean rather than accept their own failure at diplomacy, apparently in the delusional hope of some 11th hour change of heart on behalf of Turkey. There was also no big worry that Northern Iraq would be left unexposed to the shock and awe™ of the US military, Northern Iraq was a no-fly zone and had become a de facto Kurdish enclave which the government in Baghdad only enjoyed nominal control over, something that Turkey didn’t particularly enjoy as the [PKK was using it as a base for attacks on Turkey](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kurdish%E2%80%93Turkish_conflict). ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2014, 4:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/denazification-after-wwii-and-reconstruction-after-the-american-civil-war/682260/27 "2014-02-26T16:52:24Z")
> [@Sam\_Stone](#): > > the Japanese because they were forced to surrender and that was shameful in their culture. Therefore, both populations were receptive to change. What I remember was that the Japanese had strict protocol for surrender, basically swearing fealty to the conqueror. Since there was plenty of war within Japan, it would have been tough if every soldier on the losing side had to commit ritual suicide out of shame. ---
**Author:** ![Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/a587f6/32.png) [@Freddy\_the\_Pig](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Freddy_the_Pig)\ **Post date:** [February 26, 2014, 8:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/denazification-after-wwii-and-reconstruction-after-the-american-civil-war/682260/28 "2014-02-26T20:00:32Z")
> [@Little\_Nemo](#): > > Who had a right to be angry? Lincoln didn’t refuse to run in the south. Southern election boards refused to put his name on ballots. There were no state-printed ballots in 1860. Parties distributed their own electoral tickets which voters deposited in ballot boxes. In the deep South in 1860, no Republican parties came forth to nominate electors or distribute ballots. Anyone attempting to do so might have been met with violence, but I know of no one who even made the attempt. One big difference between Germany in 1945 and the South in 1865 is that Germany’s conquerors had never condoned the Holocaust (or other Nazi barbarities), whereas Northerners _had_ condoned slavery. The Northern states had once practiced slavery themselves, they lived under a constitution which acknowledged slavery, they shared a country with the slave states, and they repeatedly avowed the right of Southerners to own slaves and disclaimed any intention of interfering with slavery in states where it was legal. How could Northerners with this legacy suddenly demand “truth and reconciliation” in 1865? They would have had to purge themselves! [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/denazification-after-wwii-and-reconstruction-after-the-american-civil-war/682260.md?page=1)