Celebrating victory in Europe

The more it changes, the more it is the same thing.

It has recently been repeated, here at DKos and elsewhere, that nothing really changed when the Soviet Army took over from the Nazis in the Baltic states in the closing days of World War II.  It was just an exchange of one autocracy for another.

There are voices, largely unreported, from within Germany today, saying that there also was no real change in the West  --  in the German Federal Republic.

The day of liberation from fascism was only officially celebrated in Eastern Europe and in a few western European states. Especially in the West, it soon decayed to a day when... the old functionaries of Nazi rule quickly gained income in politics, the military and administration. The old fascist elites from Hitler Germany's second and third lines moved into the first and second lines of the Federal Republic of Germany and increased their influence.

From "The Economy has Taken the State Hostage" by Gerd Brunecker, translated by mbatko.  

This 2005 reader's letter to Junge Welt is translated from the German on the World Wide Web,  http://www.jungewelt.de/2005/04-28/025.php  

English translation

It has also been frequently reported that the repressive infrastructure of the Nazi state was continued by the Ulbricht regime in East Germany.  Only the uniforms were changed.

So, what's my point?  I don't know.  You figure it out.