Germany has lessons for the south over the Confederate flag

Mr. Sollors, whose fine book on postwar Germany, “The Temptation of Despair,” told the Roi Ottley story, said a major difference between the Southern and German approaches is what became honorable after defeat. In the South, a failure to own up to the crimes of white supremacy left feelings of “heroism about a lost cause that you adhere to because it becomes part of your honor.”

Visitors to Germany often remark that honor there is the other way around: It has become honorable to bring up the historical error; to speak of the importance of becoming the opposite of that error; to be more unsparing of your country than foreigners are, even if you were born in the 1980s.

Part of what allowed Germans to get there, Mr. Sollors said, is their inclusive notion of “collective responsibility” rather than the blame-filled notion of “collective guilt.”