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Originally Posted by Amnorix
A huge point you are missing is that these three countries did not tremendous religious/ethnic hatreds internally. They were largely homogenous and therefore the chances of internal strife greatly minimized.
The country of Iraq is just a series of lines drawn on a map in the 20s in England. Since then, it has had nothing holding it together except authoritarian rule. Tremendously fertile ground for ethnic/religious strife. Afghanistan is an area dominated by tribal rivalries.
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I'm not missing the issue of internal ethnic issues. The issue Rain Man raised was how quickly the Axis powers switched sides, not why they didn't devolve into chaos.
On the subject of internal issues, Italy and Germany both had their issues. Keep in mind, what is present day Germany had been in existance less than 100 years and had largely been held together by authoritarian rule. Had the Allies not kept the existing power structure in place, and established a strong occupation government, a power vacum would have developed similar to Iraq (Afghanistan has never had a strong central power) and attracted opportunists.
Interestingly, it was the rise of an external threat in Iraq, in the form of foreign fighters, that played a large role in turning the tide.
BTW, I wouldn't be so quick to claim that Germany didn't have tremendous internal ethnic hatreds, although it is fair to say that it was mostly resolved by 1945.