It occurred to me that Nazi ideology was entrenched in the German people from as early as the 1920s and officially since 1933 to 1945. You’d think that such a systemic worldview would be difficult to eradicate but it would seem Nazism was quickly removed after the Allies and Russians conquered them.
On the flip side, the Taliban have an entrenched ideology, but despite being occupied for over 20 years they returned to power overnight.
So, I guess two questions: Why didn’t the Nazis wage a guerrilla campaign to retake power? And why were we unable to destroy the Taliban the way we did Nazism?
Nazism was quite centralized and therefore easier to target and eliminate. The bureaucratic structure made it easy to find and convict the main players afterwards. The ideology wasn’t totally eliminated, but new laws and such helped tamp it down.
The taliban is much less centralized and on top of that the various governments involved don’t have a lot of incentive to fall into line like Germany (which the US came in and rebuilt with a ton of strings attached so that it wouldn’t lose its German market share).