DE-NAZIFICATION, A FIRST HAND RECOLLECTION
Email from someone who was there
I was a dependent teen age child in Germany 1946 through 1948. I will restrict my comments to the de-Nazification program as I remember it. EVERYBODY had been a Nazi. The Nazis had a policy of killing "kith and kin" if you messed with them. Meaning they'd kill you, your immediate family, your extended family, and all their children. The result was that the Americans had to "interview" every single person, trolley car operators, gardeners, etc., etc. What happened was that the army guys assigned to this task got bored interviewing and "deNazifying" people who were starving and who had lost the war. Americans don't carry grudges. The army guys assigned to "de-Nazify" the Germans had fought across Europe, had most of their best friends killed by the Germans, and one would think they carried a lot of hate around with them. Hate wears out quickly. The result was that after catching the big shots everybody else was let go because the alternative would have been to jail millions.

Talking with people who were in Japan right after WWII indicate that the Japanese were so stunned by the fact that we weren't cannibals, as they had been taught, and so terrified of us in general that mollifying them was easy. They also had a past where the trappings of democracy had been in place. And then MacArthur was given total authority to run the place. He set up the current state. We have a different problem here.

This is what we will find in Iraq with the Baath Party. Everybody went along because they had to. De-Baathizing Iraq will be difficult. We will find the big fish but nailing cab drivers, teachers, and lower level apparachiks won't happen.

One major difference: in Germany a guy named Konrad Adenauer who had opposed Hitler and lived. He became the leader. Germany also had a past with some democracy, a legal system dating back to Bismark, and a history. Iraq has none of this. Democracy is totally alien.