Eight years ago, a friend sent me a photograph of Marines in Afghanistan proudly posing with a Nazi SS flag. As a former soldier, Iraq veteran, and historian who focuses on the German military during the Holocaust, I was shocked, and I reported the incident to the Marines’ inspector general. “Some symbols simply have pretty solid meanings,” I wrote then of the SS runes. The Corps, to its credit, responded swiftly, using the incident as a teachable moment to its Marines about the creation and maintenance of positive unit cultures and environments. In the Donald Trump era, the lessons are …read more
Source:: The New Republic
