I've always wondered just what, exactly, it was like day-to-day with the last nation-building occupations in Europe and Japan. Unfortunately, from this distance, it's as if 1946-1951 just don't exist. Jessica's Well seeks to remedy this, at least a little bit, and the results are startling:

The troops returning home are worried. “We’ve lost the peace,” men tell you. “We can’t make it stick.”

When the British and American came the Viennese felt that at last they were in the hands of civilized people. But instead of coming in with a bold plan of relief and reconstruction we came in full of evasions and apologies.

We have swept away Hitlerism, but a great many Europeans feel that the cure has been worse than the disease.

Via Site Essential.