Don't forget that Italy and I believe France too, do not elect their governors and the West's darling Yushchenko is busy arresting and firing ELECTED opposition mayors and governors and replacing them with his APPOINTED flunkies.
Germany had a tradition of republican institutions since the middle ages. Even the Kaiser's Germany was a constitutional republic. Germany was probably the most progressive nation/people on the planet. Why saying America imported democracy in Germany is dangerous is because it means we won't learn from history - that the most advanced and civilized nation on the planet can lose its soul and go down into barbarity like Germany did (before Hitler Jews and minorities lived freer in Germany than minorities did anywhere on the planet - inclding America).
The lesson of Nazisim is that it happened to a leading civilized nation and not to some backwater.