[Savage Beast]

The American social engineering and central planning in post-war Japan and Germany may have been hubristic, but it worked, and it was the best thing that could have happened for Japan, Germany, or the rest of the world.

[Captain Kirk]

Germany had an earlier, and in many ways quite rich, liberal tradition to draw on. The political parties which dominated by the late 1940s were essentially the same ones (with the exception of the Nazis and Communists) who had dominated in the 1920s. As to Japan, I am not sure if the social engineering was ever very successful. The Zabatsu (sp) still reign and most Japanese today are taught in school that there country was right during World War II, or, at the very least, no worse than the U.S.