But in both cases, it required a harsh period of post-war reconstruction and lots of hard work and discipline from the civilian populations. Whether the USA will be able to respond to the Trump years in a similar fashion is not clear. A substantial portion of our own people will never admit they were mistaken about MAGA or correctly remember its outrages, and half the rest will simply succumb to apathy.

Even the two Axis models responded in very different ways; Germany admitted and repudiated its NAZI past entirely, Japan simply ignored its own imperialist ambitions and appalling war crimes as if they had never occurred.

And then there were the Italians, who managed to blunder through the aftermath haphazardly but eventually turned out all right after all, in spite of themselves.

The past can offer us some insight, but it can never be said to reliably serve as a guide to the future. But I will allow myself one attempt at prophecy: if the obscenity of religious, nationalist and racist capitalism is ever entirely defeated or discredited, a new malignant, toxic fascism from the Left may very well be what replaces it.