The Incompetent US Occupation of Germany:

After the glorious victory over Nazi Germany in 1945 the Allies determined to occupy Germany until we had stamped out the noxious weed of Nazism and taught the ignorant Germans about democracy.

So what actually happened in 1945 to whenever? 

Yeah. For instance, when did the US occupation of Germany end? Was it when the West Germans had an election in August 1949 and Konrad Adenauer became Chancellor? Was it in 1952 when West Germany was inducted into the European Defense Community? Was it in 1955 when "the occupation came to an official end" according to Edward N. Peterson in The American Occupation of Germany? Or does the US still occupy Germany, since it still has troops stationed in western Germany?

Of course the US occupiers were anxious to winkle out all the Nazis post 1945, so they rounded up all the usual suspects and kept a lot of them in camps where some of them suffered from malnutrition equivalent to the malnutrition in the notorious concentration camps of the Nazis. (Did you know that the Brits invented concentration camps in the Boer War? Not to be confused with the internment camps in the US during World War II.) And the War Department knew early on that all Germans were not Nazis.

[W]ell over half of the German population did not accept any of the Nazi doctrines. Only a very small percentage, ranging from 4 to 5 percent among workers to 14 percent for professionals and executives and managers were "full Nazis" on the basis of adherence to all the essential doctrines.

I wonder what the percentage of professionals and corporate managers in the US are "full Wokies." But know which side to butter their bread if they want to get promoted.

Did you know that the last thing the Germans wanted after their defeat was a continuation of Nazism? Makes sense doesn't it. I mean if some guy got elected president of the US and then led us into a world war in which we got bombed back into the stone age and just about every woman east of the Mississippi was raped by the conquering heroes of the invader, and Americans spent the next five years cadging for food just to stay alive, you think that anyone would admit to voting for the guy? Or ever want a government with anyone in it that was in the old regime?

Then the US decided it was going to teach the Germans all about Democracy. Said our Gen. Clay: "The German masses are entirely unready for self-government and ignorant of democratic responsible German government." Actually, the Germans knew all about democracy, but they didn't want to create a "constitution" but a Grundgesetz (Basic Law) to recreate what they had before Hitler (only without Hitler and Nazis). And create it they did, by running circles around the US occupiers. Said one US official:

It follows the German tradition, with adaptations to take account of contemporary conditions and political views in West Germany today.

Then there was Ludwig Erhard, who one fine day blindsided the occupiers and announced a currency reform and that "a planned and controlled economy cannot work because of human nature." There was a rocky time in the immediate aftermath of the currency reform and removal of price controls, but the economic ship righted itself and the Wirtschaftwunder was born. 

Really, how lucky were the Germans that the US occupiers had no clue and just bureaucrat-ed about for five years or so before letting the Germans govern themselves? The Soviets had a Plan, "a cadre of German communists trained to take over as Russian troops moved into German territory." And it took 44 years for the Germans to get to self-government in Eastern Germany.

You think the US ruling class has learned anything since then? So that when the ordinary middle class in the United States decides to form a new regime in the next few years the Wokies in charge will just let us go ahead and fix all the problems they have created over the decades with their stupid big government and ideological hegemony?

We can hope.