In a bleak sense I suppose I can understand, it's not as though they can have a big, "By the way, we greedily assisted the Nazis with the worst act of industrialized murder in modern history, profited from it, were never held to meaningful account, and we're still successful," room.

And examples such as "de-Baathification" in Iraq show that even the best-intentioned actions can have wide-reaching and truly devastating unintended consequences. I won't pretend that I have some neat and clean answer to any of this, but there's a persistent sense of moral outrage that feels earned around all of this.

They could have an exhibit like that, perhaps describing how they were trying to make amends, donating money to projects promoting pluralism and diversity, opposing authoritarianism around the world, helping the descendants of those they harmed, etc.

But they're not going to, because the people in charge don't sincerely care about the topic.

As for Iraq: I don't see much evidence that US actions there were "best-intentioned", or even well-intentioned.

” Bremer issued Order Number 2, in effect dissolving the entire former Iraqi army[45] and putting 400,000 former Iraqi soldiers out of work.[46] The move was widely criticized for creating a large pool of armed and disgruntled youths for the insurgency.”

Paul Bremer made something very, very stupid.

I would contend that there's a middle ground between "de-baathification" and "putting former Nazi officials in places of immense political, economic, and military positions"

I'm always surprised more people don't know how many Nazis were in NATO offices and the West German federal police