But let's be honest. The USA has never fully accepted the responsibility for what was done to those people, and almost nobody in the south wants to actually remember that shame in a way equivalent to what Germany does; whereas many, many are addicted to the pride they associate with the confederacy.
Here's where the comparison breaks down. The reason WWII shocked the world and continues to be the Godwin gold standard is because of the sheer newness of what the Nazis did: a combination of social re-organizing, industrial level (and style) murder, and efficiency being the ethic stamped on all of it. This was not just another war, and it has left its mark. The people there were made to feel ashamed, for better or worse, because of the incredible horror that broke the history books and invented a new kind of boogeyman. Let's call them innovators, to be morbid.
Slavery in the U.S., however, was the continuation of a historic and standard practice across much of the world, going back to Ancient Rome and Greece and beyond that. There were times and places that didn't have it, and many that did, and the U.S.'s fault lies mostly in that they were the last great nation I'm aware of to dispense with the practice. That is not good, and it's worth asking how it was maintained longer there than in, say, the English colonies (~30 years longer). Maybe there were special economics in play, I really don't know. Either way, the idea that the correct result of this is to see to it that the proper shame is inculcated in the South for this practice (which they inherited and grew up with) seems to me contrary to the spirit of reconciliation and healing. Granted, the danger in not doing that is in having the defeated side feel like slavery ended because they were bloodied, rather than because it was wrong. But even then you give it a few generations and that tends to take care of itself; anything more is punitive IMO.
And let's face it, the Nazis tried to take over the world and commit genocide, and many Germans at the time
voted for them. No one in America ever voted to introduce slavery, it was already a way of life; and slavers didn't ever try to take over the world and commit genocide. So even if we agreed that 'recognition of the shame of it' was necessary, the comparison the Nazis isn't viable at this point in terms of what the shame is about. I see what you're saying about Confederate pride even to this day, but I'm not at all convinced that this is a celebration of slavery - at least not the way some would claim it is. It's no coincidence, actually, that Gone With the Wind is getting cancelled now, because it's a strong argument for there really being something to lament about the fall of the South in the Civil War, even though it was a historical inevitability. There are many things about the Confederacy that no doubt retain a nostalgic or romantic appeal, such as fighting against encroaching industrialism, the last breath of the great American aristocracy, etc etc, that people might cling to. The Alamo has been a popular tourist attraction over the years, and its "brave men, lost cause" thing has a huge romance attached to it; that mythos seems understandable on its own without needing to argue that Alamo fans are exclusively celebrating killing Mexicans. And yeah, probably some of them are just racists, too.
