Thanks for that link. Some fascinating perspectives emerge from this re WW2:
Wiki said:
The state of war was retained since it provided the U.S. with a legal basis for keeping troops in Western Germany
(noting that this is a simplified summary of circumstances, and therefore not fully-cited via references)
I've never heard this 'incompetant state' justification used with regard to the retention of British Forces Germany BFG (nee British Army Of the Rhine BAOR) ie that the constituency which was the German state at the outbreak of WW2 being so different from the immediate post-1945 corpus that it justified the continued occupation of the country
until reunification in the early 1990s, but it does represent a logical excuse.
It's intriguing that I've never heard this openly-stated previously, either by historians or by friends & family that have served in BAOR/BFG up until....well, the present day
, since BFG still exists as a small shadow of its former self. According to Wiki, it is meant to finally
cease to exist this year (2019).
Perhaps I never registered this dimension, due to the overarching immediacy of what is called the Cold War, and it was somehow always lurking as part of British foreign policy.
On a related note, I did not know (until now, reading
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_reparations) that apparently following Yalta, Germany paid
zero reparations to the UK or other Allied nations. This is actually a real surprise to me.
Whether this was influenced by Germany still paying reparations to recipients arising from WW1 until 2010 (almost a century of payback) or, some gargantuan knock-for-knock reconcilliation (which I have NEVER seen stated in writing) so when I say was Dresden perhaps considered to be a cancellation/equivalency for Coventry and the London Blitz, I mean no offence to be taken on either side.
Amazing stuff (well, it is for olds who were young-enough to be born after it all)