Bewolf

I am not sure how to respond to this. Though at first glance I'd agree to you, at least when it comes to the current generations of germans, I think we were talking about the folks back then, and they certainly would have not agreed with that. And even though I consider democracy and human rights as some of the most important achievements in human history, I do not give it the holy sanction of them beeing the only important factors in defining the well beeing of a country. The german empire, for example, was not a democracy, but it was a country build on the principles of justice nevertheless. The justice system of the holy roman empire had a reputation of not making destinction between nobles and peasants when cases were brought to court, one contributing factor to the german tendency to be rather trustworthy of their government and not as willing to revolt as in was the case in other countries, which came biting us in our asses when the Nazis took over. Whenever germans started to revolt big time, the case of national "unification" was the most dominant one, 1918 beeing the sole exception to that rule. The Morgenthau Plan in this would have been much worse then the partition of Germany had been anyways.

So, I am grateful for what the allies did, but I am certainly not grateful because ppl like you tell me "you should be", or because I think the allies back then were of any morale superiourity in their goals for this war. The only ppl I'd shake hands with are the soldiers and all the other folks that took the burden to go to war for their own private reasons, mostly idealistic ones, willing to risk their lives for these. Everything else just served the political and economical goals of Russia, England and the US respectivly.
In this we actually have to thank the Russians, without their opposition to the US and the american politics to contain communism, Germany would have faced a much worse fate me thinks. And this would have led to huge problems nowadays.