As a german, the whole “we learned from our mistakes and render our backs bloody each morning” was never real, well only as real as those white people in america who cosplay as slaves to “wash away” white privilege or something. And it only happened truly in the 80s, there was revisionist history abound, just like in southern united states.
The narrative was always very limited and bent to exclude political opponents du jour, after all west germany was supposed to fight slavs, communists and soviets which were 2/3 of the nazi enemies. Preventing actual resurgence of nazism would have meant dismantling capitalist white supremacist and imperialist power structures and in the end UK, France and the United States were counting on those staying.
As a german, the whole “we learned from our mistakes and render our backs bloody each morning” was never real, well only as real as those white people in america who cosplay as slaves to “wash away” white privilege or something. And it only happened truly in the 80s, there was revisionist history abound, just like in southern united states.
The narrative was always very limited and bent to exclude political opponents du jour, after all west germany was supposed to fight slavs, communists and soviets which were 2/3 of the nazi enemies. Preventing actual resurgence of nazism would have meant dismantling capitalist white supremacist and imperialist power structures and in the end UK, France and the United States were counting on those staying.