Just to put numbers to this, sickening as that is...<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Casualties_of_the_Iraq_War</a> estimates between 150k and 1 million dead.  That&#x27;s out of a total population of 32 million or so according to &lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Demographics_of_Iraq&gt;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Demographics_of_Iraq&gt;</a>, so somewhere between 1 in 200 and 1 in 30 killed.<p>For comparison, the population of Germany in 1939 was about 70 million according to &lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Demographics_of_Germany#Statistics_since_1900&gt;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;Demographics_of_Germany#Statis...</a>.  And according to <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;German_casualties_in_World_War_II" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;German_casualties_in_World_War...</a> there were somewhere between 4.3 to 5.3 million military deaths, somewhere between 500k to 2 million civilian deaths due to some of the Soviet end-war and post-war shenanigans, another 350k to 600k civilian deaths due to Allied bombing.  Let&#x27;s call it 5 million all told on the low end.  That&#x27;s 1 in 14.  And due to the fraction of this that were military, the resulting demographic distribution has some interesting features.  See &lt;<a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:Germany_sex_by_age_1950_12_31.png&gt;" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&#x2F;wiki&#x2F;File:Germany_sex_by_age_1950_1...</a>.  In particular, note the deep notch in the 30-35 demographic that would have been born during World War 1 and the large differences between numbers of males and females in all the 20-30 age group.<p>So one difference is that a larger fraction of the population was dead, and a significantly larger fraction of the &quot;young male&quot; demographic that tends to do things like fight back against the occupier as opposed to going on with life.  People were just _tired_ of fighting, effectively.<p>Another difference was the massive aid&#x2F;rebuilding program financed via the Marshall Plan.<p>And I suspect a final difference was a much smaller feeling of &quot;us vs them&quot; or &quot;we&#x27;re fundamentally different&quot;, on both sides....