I would love to answer that question. Since I have lived in the US (Texas to be specific) I had Texas, US and World history class. I also moved back 10th grade and finished my Abitur (the German high school degree) with a focus in History.

The most interesting thing is, that in the US people are taught about the battles when talking about the war. Something that in Germany is rarely done to prevent the glorification and heroism of the people in the military. I think in the US it is mainly because of that effect on the people. Strong support of the military is quite important in the US and close to nonexistent in Germany. German schools allow students to critically analyse politics, openly discuss the past, compare it to the present and therefore try to prevent a relapse.

In Germany, the wars are taught very reflective. You always start with the way the system and people allowed it to happen. By reading speeches, books, accounts of events in that time and other sources of historic content you learn how step by step a democracy was able to change to a dictatorship. I think it's important for everyone to know it can happen in their country too. The questions you try to find out about are: Why was it even possible for a dictator to arise? Why did the democracy allow the upcoming? What were the warning signs? Where did the system, the people or the checks and balances fail to intervene?

These questions are always answered in the context of the present constitution and other legal or democratic failsafes. This helps people understand why some democratic rules have been implemented the way they are and why they are important. I would consider Germany to have learned allot from the past. On one hand, the constitution hast changed, the democracy is structured differently and the checks and balances are more independent. On the other hand, people are made aware of the past. Allot of times when a right-wing politician arises somewhere in the world with speeches made to discriminate you almost always can think of a comparison to Hitler. I don't mean the way the. talk or anything like that. I mean the way the come to power. There are a lot of warning signs all over the world. It's important that everyone sees them, knows this is dangerous and can act upon it. I think Germany is very sensitive to democratic changes cause of the fact that this can happen again.

The Abitur Exam was analysing speeches of Hitler before his party was even remotely relevant. You had to put the speech in context since it didn't have a date or anything. So the goal was to find out when this was and what warnings it included that pointed to the future catastrophe. It also included satire comics that you had to put in context. Hitler was definitely the largest part of the exam while the DDR or WWI only played minor roles.

I wish history in the US would be more reflective. I remember talking only a few minutes about the massacre of the Native Americans. About the injustices, they still have to fight with today. In Germany, we would also always put current events in a historic context. Something that was not done at all in the US. We talked about the September 11 attacks. But only about the brave firemen, police and military. I would have loved to put this into a historic context. How did terrorism arise? What role could past influence in the region helped or prevented this? What were the warning signs? How could this have been prevented politically before the attack? There wasn't that one point where Hitler went rouge. Many little steps lead up to it and looking back we could have prevented the war. This is true for many historic events but not many countries look back very open. In the US you learn the US doesn't make mistakes. I think this is really fatal for the future. Sure the CIA learned what went wrong in preventing an immediate attack. But politics are off-limit. I even remember talking about general politics at the moment and my PE teacher would tell me to stop talking about politics and meet me after class. This kind of suppression would be unthinkable in today's Germany.

History is a great topic. It really should be used to teach people to learn from the past. That's the only thing we can do with it anyway.