Germany 1945 - 1950s

The Germans were completely defeated and the country lay in ruins. There was no will f......phone ringing downstairs...

This was total war. What we have today is war with Health and Safety regulations.  Total defeat of the enemy was the norm in the past so little post war resistance.

I think when America dropped the atom bomb that concentrated a few minds.

then they went about remaking Germany in our image, not theirs. It worked in Japan also.
When you invade a country you change it, otherwise its pointless invading.

There were many millions of Nazis in Germany after the war, we made that illegal and that was the end of that problem.
As soon as something is made illegal the vast majority of people accept it, and it dies along with its main leaders and main war criminals.
Its easy to make anything illegal, including religion.
There`s a clue as to why things go wrong in the middle east.

In the "good old days" the enemy was totally defeated.  These days the only people fighting a total war are ISIS which gives them an advantage.

We have entered an age of perpetual low level war/terrorism.

Won the World Cup in 1954 after being bombarded to fook and back. Never write them off.

I believe the allies feared it and a retreat of them to base themselves in the mountains so rushed to take that area, but it never happened, was covered in some book I read a while back. They called themselves wolfsomething? ok :
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Werwolf

Dividing the country into two parts helped.

So how did we get it so wrong after more recent conflicts?

Afhganistan is impossible to invade, unless you redefine the word invasion. Many have tried. None have succeeded. According to wiki, the following have tried: [i]the Maurya Empire of ancient India, Sikh Empire, Alexander the Great of Greece, Umar, an Arab Caliphate, Genghis Khan of Mongolia, Timur of Persia and Central Asia, the Mughal Empire of India, various Persian Empires, the British Empire, the Sikh Empire, the Soviet Union

The most recent is of course us as america's sidekick and we are going to chicken out at some point too, if we havent already? The last i heard about the conflict was America in talks with Taliban in Kuwait with the help of Pakistani government. Afghanistan eventually turns into a graveyard for the invading forces so no point wondering why we got it wrong there(especially since we got involved because of a NATO clause and not because Afghanistan did anything to us)

Iraq was based on lies. It wasn't meant to be a successful invasion. And was yet another country that wasn't a threat to us anyways. Those in whose interests the lies were cooked are probably satisfied with the war still alive and spilling into neighboring territories.

Libya, well, i have no clue about why we invaded them but my guess is it was because america said so. Also its hard to succeed considering the european people were never ready for a war. The libyans are hitting back by piling into ships and sucking our welfare money and we people whine about it everyday. Imagine if they started bombing!

Probably comparing these conflicts to the WW2 is wrong. There, Britain was under threat. Hence the war. Here, Britain joined a war it had nothing to do with, hence the threat that you see everyday. This resulting thread should soon result in another war and there we might have a shot at success since we'll be fighting it on our own turf and people will actually have to ensure they dont lose.

It was simple. The British, French and American occupying forces identified the policemen, bureaucrats, management, teachers etc. who had efficiently been carrying out their duties to ensure that Nazism ran smoothly, and then employed them to perform exactly the same roles making sure democracy ran equally smoothly.

Everyone was happy. They just got on with their jobs as before.

There was no de-Nazification. Instead, as lfc1971 indicates, Nazism was simply made illegal, and the population duly adapted in order to have a quiet life.

Unfortunately our modern policy makers seem to think that there was some sort of idealistic, root-and-branch sacking of millions of Nazi party members in post-War Germany, and that they should proceed in that fashion in Iraq. With the disastrous results we now see. It never occurred to them to consider what millions of suddenly unemployed citizens might do if you take away their means of subsistence.

All you had to do in Iraq was declare the Ba'ath party illegal in the same way the Nazi party had been, and tell the former members to get on with their jobs in the same way the Germans did.

It doesn't help that Blair had this ignorant idea that WW2 was fought as some sort of idealist crusade to free the Jews of Europe. That turned out to be a happy, but coincidental consequence. In reality it was a war fought for all the usual banal reasons - to honour treaties and to save democracy from short-arsed men with a sense of destiny.

When a nation has thrown the entirety of it's manpower and resources at it's enemies and still be conquered and occupied , it seems a bit futile to follow that up with a few hundred blokes running around in the woods setting ambushes etc

Guerilla Warfare is most severe when the initial conquest seemed unopposed .

Iraq was a very easy place to impose a new way of life if we had had the courage to impose our will .
The first thing to do was to take control of the oil, this would be used to finance the operations .
Then each small town and village is isolated and each in turn is made into an image that we want, not that they want,
Religion banned , mosques closed , everything to do with religion , apart from the Christian religion made illegal in that town or village.
Then we use the oil money to bring in jobs , and healthcare, and schools, and knowledge and infrastructure and civil society based on democratic western values in these small towns and villages.
And before very long there are whole regions whose life has been made better
Then the people of other parts of Iraq see the improvements , it is made very clear that they also can share in this new way of life and the main towns and cities will be next to be changed, they must be changed, and this is how you do it,
And this is how you create peace
And it can be done in a fairly short time .

screaming!!!!

As a short-arsed person I am deeply offended.

ps

have you noticed that so many short-arses cause so much trouble all out of proportion to their size etc

mr hilter, old musso and stalin  - how about nelson ?  he was a punchy fella too!!!

do you think we have an inferiority complex??

Taking religion to the ...s  has always been fraught with problems.  Why do we do it.  Are we somehow better than them??

It used to be for trade and control but we have lost both.

Except perhaps for guns!!!