" This insistence on unity was the source of one of the most potent myths of the postwar period – the idea that the responsibility for all the evils of the war rested exclusively with the Germans. If it was only ‘they’ who had perpetrated atrocities upon ‘us’, then the rest of Europe was released from all accountability for the injustices it had perpetrated upon itself.47 Better still, the bulk of Europe would be able to share in the ‘victory’ over Germany. The loathing that all Europeans expressed towards Germany and Germans in the aftermath of the war was therefore only partly a reaction to the things Germany had actually done – it was also a way for each country to heal its own wounds. "

― Keith Lowe , Savage Continent: Europe in the Aftermath of World War II