Germany was very early recognised not to be just nazis: the British cartoonist Low famously pointed to the irrationality of German-hating a fortnight after VE-Day, and by 1946 US and British charities and individuals sending food parcels to Germany where hunger was widespread. Later willingness to overlook past enmity was down to the Cold War: by 1947 Germany was just too valuable a geopolitical asset - and too important to European economic recovery - to ostracise and punish in perpetuity. Germans too worked to undo the nazi legacy, swiftly restoring the representative institutions dismantled in the 1930s. Past misdeeds were often overlooked in the search for those with administrative, business or technical skill to launch the new Germanies, though "never again" long remained a near-universal comment on the recent past.