Many other countries have struggled to reconcile their differences after lesser conflicts, so what events and policies made peace among us something we most take for granted?
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Simple EILI5 answer is because our government installed their governments. We built them into the nations we wanted them to be – prosperous, stable trading partners and allies against communism.
While a lot of answers here make sense there’s another aspect I don’t see being mentioned. No land ownership disputes.
The US doesn’t share any land borders with Germany, Italy, or Japan. It wasn’t in a position to move the borders and take over the land. (With the exception of isolated bits of land hosting military bases.) That meant there were no real land ownership grudges – those tend to last multiple generations.
Don’t get me wrong, there were lots and lots of “you have to move this border” changes as a result of WW2, especially with the borders of Poland. But the key thing is that from the US point of view, those border moves were between third-party countries, with the US not being the country gaining the land, and many of them were brokered by multiple nations.
“The US wasn’t the country that gained the land” is a major part of discussing why there wasn’t a lot of generational lasting anger toward the US over it.
The insistence on unconditional surrender allowed the allies full control of the countries after the war.
The Marshall plan, strong economic relationships, mutual defense agreement.
To destroy your enemy, you must make them your friend.
Because WW1.
Turns out, when you push a nation to the ground, you tend to antagonize the shit out of the Populus. which allows people that actively dislikes you to gain immediate power.
So post WW2, instead of making enemies, assistance was granted in financial and “military”, and keeping in check the any potential anti US factions from rising to power.
For reference, WW1 Germany was told to pay 132 billion gold marks.
WW2 Germany was told to pay only several billion, but technology, manufacturing, and land would be taken instead of crushing debt.
You want a real rabbit hole … just start looking around and realize that we have been consistently choosing fascists and dictatorships over democracies bc of anti communist hysteria since ww2. The real driving motivations is the subjugating force of global capitalism
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