Part of the problem is how the United States teaches the Great Depression and post WWI Germany. I can definitely recall being taught in, probably high school(?), that war reparations are what caused Germany to fall apart.
That's what everybody learns. Makes it nice and tidy. "We were too hard on Germany and drove them bankrupt and Hitler appeared and this is why we must always impose the Western liberal banking system across the world via our highly-tuned system of embassies and multinational corporations." I mean, i fuckin' grew up believing that what Iraq needed was more McDonald's. Germany spent themselves into oblivion thinking they could rape France. France and England spent themselves into oblivion thinking they could make their money back raping Germany. The United States piled in behind France and England because everyone was so fucking spent that all we had to do was pick a side and there would be a winner. Except there wasn't. There was a stalemate. A number of scholars have pointed out that WWII wouldn't have happened if Germany had actually lost WWI; they didn't, they "signed an armistice" which basically said we're done fighting not we lose but nobody had the appetite to fight trench warfare clear to Berlin. So now there's this big fuckin' hole that everyone piled all their money into. America expects France and England to pay America out of that hole. England and France expect Germany to pay them out of that hole. Germany doesn't see any reason why they owe England or France squat; after all, if they hadn't walled in German sovereignty we wouldn't be here in the first place and besides, there's no money anyway. You teach that lesson during Enduring Freedom? You're a leftist pinko. You teach that lesson during Desert Storm? You're a leftist pinko. You teach that lesson during Nicaragua? You're a leftist pinko. You teach that lesson during Vietnam? You're a leftist pinko. You teach that lesson during Korea? You're a traitor. One cannot ask "what price empire" when Empire is what we do.