I'm going to steer clear of the Nazi debate, but I've GOT to answer this one:
The Civil War is over, or so it would appear to me. So why people want to keep it up is absolutely fragglin ridiculous when we have real enemies to worry about. Whether or not it was a legitimate war, a legal or illegal war, fought to free the slaves or not - it really is over. One side lost badly, the other side won well. So what IT IS OVER!
You truly have no knowledge of history whatsoever if you think the South got walloped by the North. It's kind of like saying we won in Vietnam.
Considering the North lost about two soliders for every one the South, I wouldn't exactly call it a walloping.
Given equal conditions (IOW, not having all of your supplies cut off from you due to geographical biases of industry), the South would have beaten the North so bad you'd be singing "Dixie" at football games instead of the National Anthem".
Southerners take pride in the Confederacy because it was a group of civilians taking up arms to defend their homeland from a tyrannous invader who seeked to usurp their rights. The confederates defended their homeland bravely and fought well until they simply ran out of supplies. Without that, they had no way of fighting off the numerically superior forces.
See, we give great credit and hold reverance for those who did that the first time around (Washington, Adams, Jefferson, Franklin, etc.), but we make villians of those who did it a second time (Davis, Lee, Jackson, etc.)
What makes me laugh so much about the propaganda being spread in the North about the war was that it was about "freeing the slaves'. I want to know who HONESTLY believes that the US Government truly was interested in freeing slaves, whom they viewed in their own constitution as inferior people, much like livestock.
If they were interested in freeing slaves, they would have done something about their rights oh, say, 100 years earlier than they did. But they weren't. They wanted to get rid of slavery in the south for economic reasons ONLY.
Once again, you could call the Civil War "Revolutionary War II", because all the same reasons and players are there, the outcome is only different.
I will make one comment though about the Hitler/Nazi regime thing: I find it hard to believe the numbers that are paraded about how many Jews were killed during the war. I've heard everying from 1 million all the way to 7 million. The numbers don't make Hitler any less of a madman, but why artificially inflate the numbers to make him any worse than he already was? It's not even physically possible for 7 million jews to be killed, the math just doesn't even add up.
3200 people per DAY, figuring seven million people being killed over a six year period, 7 days a week. I don't care how you pack them, or bury them, you cannot dispose of 3200 bodies per day, period. It's impossible.
I'm sure in some history book ten years from now the numbers will be upwards of 15 million or more. It's a shame that we live in a system where the truth is always going to play second fiddle to the winner's report of what the war was REALLY about, but that's how it's going to be.
Just remember, Thomas Jefferson was a national hero and a slave owner.
Robert E. Lee did not own slaves and felt that every man was created equal, but he was a villanous racist.