The countryside may have been largely untouched (at the least the sections without a secluded concentration camp,) but most, if not all, large population centers were reduced to rubble. Regional devastation was directly proportional to the number of people available for it to effect, thus extreme and common among natives. Civil infrastructure was virtually annihilated, because even before the occupation areas with large industrial capacity and/or governmental presence were the preferred targets for over a year of Allied bombing. Unlike Afghanistan and Iraq, war rationing had been the norm in Axis Germany for several years; Wikipedia notes that during the occupation the average German subsisted on about 1000 calories or less/day, virtual starvation level.

That grim portrait is, of course, of West Germany; East Germany bore the brunt of Stalins wrath for a betrayal and two year invasion that reached all the way to the city bearing his name, and left it rubble as well. There was no Marshall Plan to soften that blow, and even had the Soviets been inclined to aid their erstwhile foes, the rest of the Warsaw Pact countries, as well as the Ukraine and much of Russia, were higher priorities for the Soviets limited reconstruction resources.

Japan probably falls somewhere between the two. A downside of being an island nation was that much of the country was within range of Halseys Seventh Fleet as it cruised the coastline nightly for a year firing 16" shells 20 miles inland till dawn. American bombers from Okinawa and Iwo Jima inflicted yet more devastation across the islands in the wars final stages. MacArthur might have been slightly more benevolent than Stalin, but never forgot his disgraced defeat and retreat from the Philippines, nor the Bataan Death March following it. It is perhaps fortunate for Japan that it had been so conditioned to accept the absolute authority he commanded on the island (though the delusions of grandeur it prompted in MacArthur proved most UNfortunate during the Korean War.)

Socially, industrially and economically there just was not much of Japan or Germany by the wars end. Their leaders absolutism and the fanaticism instilled to serve it exhausted all their resources before surrender, and virtually all vestiges of democracy had been swept away in the process before the tide ever turned against the Axis. What remained was solely in memory, and that only in the minds of those too old or otherwise infirm for conscription to resist an implaccable, and in the Russians case terrifying, foe. There is just no comparison between the utter ruin of the former Axis countries and the Wests brief campaign of precision strikes against Taliban and Republican Guard resistance.


Perhaps they had less active strife simply because they had no remaining targets for it, but there was certainly no more ethnic tolerance, and was every bit as much ethnic hatred. I suppose it is fair to say it did not divide the country much, but populations that supported mass deportation and imprisonment of all minorities were certainly a great obstacle to responsible democracy. The great lesson of Nazi Germany, after all, is that countries willing and able to scapegoat minorities for their ills will find, even invent, whatever minority is necessary for that purpose regardless of current demographics.


A little known aspect of Japanese fascism under the Military "party" was that it generally viewed whites, the West and non-Japanese Asians much as Hitler viewed Jews, hence atrocities like Bataan. That is a rather short trip from the gaijin "foreign devils" quarantined in Japanese trade cities (ironically, that was once Nagasakis chief claim to fame.) Anti-Western sentiment was at least as strong and prevalent there as in Afghanistan and Iraq, with the added resentment that Japan had been a rising power poised to supplant Britain and Americas dominant naval role until the Washington Conference permanently prevented parity (thereby making war inevitable.) A better parallel might be Iran, because much of Japans educated class (e.g. Yamamoto) was WESTERN educated and thus more sympathetic to Western ideals, but the general populace remained rather xenophobic. Regardless, the kulturkampf was at least as strong in Imperial Japan (particularly since Japan had not lost a war in living memory,)

Anyway, Afghanistans anarchy may not be the most fertile field for democracy, but is at least a blank slate. Weimars dismal failure and the return to glory and power with over a decade of Hitlers totalitarianism actively conditioned Germany against democracy. Likewise, there was little room for it in an Imperial Japan where the divine Emperor was not only head of government and state, but also the state religion centered around him. Iraqs undemocratic government was admittedly longer lasting than Hitlers or Tojos, but the Talibans government did not even last as LONG as either; if Afghan society is not conducive to democracy, it also was not strongly hostile to it until 1991 or later. If democracy is surprisingly difficult to instill, it is less so where people are simply unfamiliar with rather than actively opposed to it.


It did not simply "melt away," could not have in a country where the majority of parents had supported Hitler to at least some degree. It was removed just as it had been instilled: By more indoctrination. Remember, Hitler only attempted coup was a dismal failure; German democracy was not murdered, but committed suicide. There is no better testament to the principle of majority rule WITH minority rights enshrined in the US Constitution (and no, I do not pretend things like the Three-Fifths Compromise indicate we got it completely right the first time.) Civilian control did not return to Germany until 1955 (technically, it did not fully resume until Germanys 1990 reunification,) by which point, yes, Allied indoctrination (and other investment) had prepared Germans for democracy.

I did not say you do not remember the pre-911 world: I said the WTC attack gives you a radically and fundamentally different perspective than I had just after turning 25 in 1999. For that matter, it gives me a different perspective; I no longer expect "the winds of change," to usher in a new era of global peace free from the specter of nuclear annihilation; if anything, I am more concerned by the increasing degree to which nuclear weapons are not confined to rational actors like the Soviets and Chinese. If, however, you were an Afghan who began school in the Talibans early days I think it safe to say your view of the West would differ greatly from that of Afghans who eagerly accepted US furnished SAMs, M-16s and CIA instructors to resist the Soviet occupation. Ten years of the Taliban telling you America is your mortal and spiritual enemy would ensure that, and ten years of US occupation would drive home the point.


Now that is a good point, I admit; IIRC, Tom or rt earlier noted the war had consumed most of the Axis powers means to resist, particularly Germanys, where the Führer expected every man and child to do his duty and die for the Reichs lost cause (and the terror of Stalin ensured most on the Eastern front did so if only from desperate necessity.) However, with sufficient manpower fighting age youth can be policed as effectively as anyone else; the problem is 200,000 soldiers is nowhere near sufficient for a population of 30 million. That is a completely unmanageable ratio of 150:1; 30:1 would probably do it, and 15:1 definitely would, but that would require US conscription. Again, a countrys commitment to war and occupation can be directly measured by its willingness to conscript; where the latter is absent, so is the former, whatever the rhetoric.


I disagree that there was more nation to build though, because virtually nothing was left with which to build in the post-war Axis nations. The time and circumstances made it impossible, however, because no Allied nation (including the US) was willing to invest either the time nor the manpower required. It was starkly clear from the start that both the White House and the public expected us to go over there, shoot all the bad guys and come home. That is probably what we SHOULD have done, and if we had not bizarrely and hubristically taken time out for regime change in Iraq we well might have. Ultimately, it is neither our right nor responsibility to fix another nations broken government; we have every right and responsibility to remove lethal foreign threats, but once we bombed the Taliban into the Stone Age (which, realistically, COULD not take long) and imprisoned or killed bin Laden, our mission WOULD have been accomplished.

If, however, we insisted on signing up for nation-building we were obligated to do it right, not half-assed. I can only imagine how frustrating it is for Vietnam vets like Colin Powell, John Kerry and John McCain to watch another generation of civilian hawks (who dodged Vietnam in their own youth) repeat all the same mistakes. It was another politicized open-ended and undefined war, denied sufficient manpower and other resources solely because of the political consequences of publicizing their cost (and never mind the military consequences of refusing that cost.) Shortly before the Iraq invasion the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs was "retired" after telling Congress the occupation would need at least 200,000 troops, despite the White Houses earlier insistence half that number would be enough. Within six months we had that many soldiers deployed—and it still was not nearly enough, but we had no more to send without stripping our other defences dangerously thin (indeed, we redeployed 35,000 soldiers from the North Korean border anyway, even as the nation prepared for its first nuclear weapons test.)

It was not that we could not do the job, but that, as in Vietnam, we would not admit, even to ourselves, what the job required, because we would neither pay that price nor admit the failure lesser commitment made inevitable. Hence we repeatedly responded to "resurgency" with half-hearted "surges" of 10-20% of our fighting force, which the very term "surge" declared a temporary investment.


Konrad Adenauer did not have full control of Germany until 1955 though, by which time the Marshall Plan had rebuilt the West Germany industry decimated by war. He does, however, illustrate what I meant about the difficult of finding non-Nazis to take control of post-war Germany, because he was already 73 when he became Chancellor in 1949. Yet everyone with the necessary experience was either 1) near the same age or 2) acquired that experience as an active member of the Nazi government. I am barely old enough to run for president in the US, but in 17 years (the length of time between the beginning of Hitlers chancellorship and Adenauers) I will be pushing 60, and could only be fit to govern a country would be if I spent most of that time in government.

It took ten years to return Germany to a democratic basis, and has taken longer to even commence such a basis for Afghanistan. It took nearly as long in Iraq, and failed miserably, but we might have done it in both had we been willing to accept such a time table and goal from the outset, and commit the necessary resources. That was never our intent though; indeed, we actively avoided any such intent. Bush, and the US public, clearly envisioned a war lasting a year or two, MAYBE three. Everything after that was no more than a final effort to reduce the conflagration to a smolder, or enough of one to allow a Nixonian "peace with honor" exit (which, ironically, may have been what set the stage for the OPEC embargo and anti-Western Mideast terror immediately thereafter; the man really did set the bar for future claims to the title of Worst President EVER, and America has been in near-constant decline ever since he took office.)

More catchup tomorrow, I promise (take that how you like.... )