Intent to Kill

I think all of those are contributing factors, to a degree which may not be discernible.

*ponder* I wonder how much of Germany's fiddling around these days is an attempt to dismantle various social functions and reassemble them into something that works better. Because that would be one damn fine application of their structural knack. Not enough data to be certain yet, but I am freshly reminded that they did have an awful lot of spare parts to be looking at.

>> Anyway,
the assertion would be that the Weimar Republic failed
because the Germans failed to learn how a democracy ought to work.
All sorts of ways to shoot that one down.<<

Just because something is workable doesn't mean people will figure out how to make it work immediately. I think there are different ways for a democracy to work, because several effective variations have been employed over the years. If Germany was missing part of the picture, that may have contributed to their problems, though there were definitely other problems going on at the time. Democracy is hard; right now America isn't doing too well with it.

>>IIRC, the original article that mentioned it
was primarily about the disaster of mistreating prisoners
as the US is doing now.<<

Mistreatment of prisoners is indeed a disaster and a disgrace. It's high on my list of "uncivilized behavior," along with mistreatment of other helpless or disadvantaged persons. This is a key reason why my opinion of America is lower now than it has been in the past. When one's ambient government starts saying that torture is moral, all kinds of red lights and warning flags should go berserk.

>>I've never heard of a single American POW
returning to Germany after the war
and becoming a German citizen.
There were dozens of German POWs who returned to Nebraska
after the war and became US citizens.<<

Fascinating! That would be a trend worth tracking.

>> That wouldn't prove that the prisoners here
were treated better, but it's certainly the inference I've drawn.<<

Not proof, but strong evidence in favor.

I think this, and other aspects of Germany's regrowth, are worth studying closely because Germany is one of the few cases where a nation has gone through extreme evil and then really put their shoulders into getting out of that sinkhole. If they succeed, if they can sustain the positive change over the long term, then it is imperative to understand how they did that. Or at least we need to have a record of what they did, and were thinking, and whatever else we can scrape up, so that even if we can't figure out why it worked or how to duplicate it, we'll still have the data for the example so that other people aspiring to the same goal will have somewhere to start.

>> Germany WAS a civilized nation.<<

Germany HAS BEEN a civilized nation and an uncivilized nation (counted both by locale and by culture) through multiple cycles through history. It's ... kind of bipolar, that way, I think, in that it's had some resplendent highs and horrifying lows.

>> What caused them to be what they are today was their utter shock and horror at realizing what they managed to become under Hitler. They took a good hard look at themselves and threw up a lot, and, in abject shame and horror, decided to be better.<<

In my observation, that is a substantial part of the influence. I doubt that's all there is to it, though. Broad cultural changes rarely spring from a single source. In particular they picked up some new memes, and those almost never spontaneously generate; they're much easier to get from someone else.

>> German POWs weren't treated any better by Americans than American POWs were treated by Germans.<<

I'm dubious of that, although my information is not as complete as I'd like. It's known that at the time, Germany was mistreating people en masse, was running the "nonpersons" meme, and didn't care what other nations thought of its behavior. Those are not typically precursors of human POW treatment. (Some Germans disagreed vehemently with those things, but they were not in power at the time, which was the problem.) Meanwhile America was in one of its saner and more decent phases in terms of setting a good example on the world stage. It was actively trying to be a good role model and make the world a better place; didn't always work out so well, but was a far cry better than today's floundering morass of hypocritical doom. I've read accounts claiming that German (and other) POW's were treated honorably by Americans. One example that particularly stuck in my mind was a TV documentary about several German POWs who escaped from a stateside prison, and after several months ... went back and turned themselves in. Their treatment there was more appealing than starving freedom. For anyone to put themselves willing back into enemy hands is remarkable, and speaks strongly for humane conditions therein. (I find it hard to imagine someone escaping from Abu Ghraib or similar places being willing to go back. It was a distressing comparison.) And that wasn't an isolated incident; apparently that happened more than once. What I would really like to complete the picture is a German accounting of their POWs and the conditions in American care.

How much of an impact this had on Germany ... is debatable. We're not talking about a small number of POWs going home, and Germany had lost a lot of people so that influx would've made a splash. Whatever they learned, whoever they became, sum total, would ripple through society. That includes the racking regrets and the newfound insights alike. Meanwhile all sorts of other influences were shaking what was left of Germany's culture. What has regrown since, as best I can tell, is not yet complete; shows clear antecedents both in Germany's own historic culture base and borrowings from elsewhere; and has hints and glimmers of things emerging that don't yet closely match anything else, so may be completely new.