If memory serves the entire West German intelligence apparatus was run by ex Nazis.

The BRD was like that famous Fawlty Towers sketch. "Don't mention the war!".

Well, if you look into the whole ordeal regarding the planned ban of the NPD a few years ago, the whole NSU ordeal and the things regarding the AfD i would guess not much has changed...

Odd that you're allowed to say this but I'm not. Is it because I mentioned the relationship between Germany and Israel?

Huh? I mean, even major news outlets in germany (even government owned) reported about the... ehm... "interesting" relationship of the various intelligence agencies and the far right...

Just to be curious, what did you write about Israel and Germany?

Hacker News is best viewed with showdead enabled, and then you will be able to see it.

For all it's flaws, it was far more successful than reconstruction.

Germany as a whole hates Nazis, both because they were absolute monsters in human skin, and because they brought unprecedented and absolute ruin and devastation to the country.

Any right-thinking southerner should feel the same way about the Confederacy. And yet, a good chunk of them actively think that those animals were some kind of national heroes, unafraid of proudly broadcasting their affiliation with them.

For all the apologists white-washing history, you don't see a lot of elementary schools named after Heinrich Himmler in Berlin.

The world might not have a lot of heroes, but it has no shortage of utterly irredeemable villains.

Key difference: Denazification was imposed on Germany from the Allies. There was no such force during reconstruction.

Half the purpose of reconstruction was purging Confederates from any position of political influence.

Unfortunately, a campaign of terrorism that culminated in the crooked compromise of 1877 brought an end to that.

I wonder from time-to-time how many Richmonders realize that the Union didn't burn down the town; the Confederacy did to deprive the Union of the munitions stores. Richmonders were trying to put the fire out because, well, it was destroying their homes.

Portions of the city that were razed weren't rebuilt until into the Nineties (the 1990s).

But somehow, a mythology clings on that the Union were the problem, not the people carrying the torches.

That's hyperbolic nonsense. Germany today is a liberal democracy.

It got sabotaged by the ex-Nazi West Germans, who realized they could use West German re-armament and NATO membership (which was needed against the Soviets) as leverage to pressure the Allies to drop denazification and look the other way at them pushing the "Myth of the Clean Wehrmacht."