Take a look at Germany and Japan in 1945. The Axis countries had been thoroughly defeated and shamed for starting the war, and being monsters who built concentration camps. Every family had lost a son or father on the battlefield. Their cities, industry, and infrastructure had been bombed flat. Men, women, and children had lived underground due to bombing overhead for years. Their leaders had been totalitarian maniacs that had reinstituted slavery and were driven by racist nonsense. The ones that hadn't killed themselves were hanged. There was starvation, disease, and milions and millions of people living under canvas in barbed wire enclosures. The Red Army gang raped every woman and girl they could get their hands on. Criminals ran loose. Everyone was under investigation. A pack of cigarettes or a chocolate bar could be exchanged for anything. The Allied powers held their former enemies' lives in their hands.

And yet for all of that trauma over the horrible years of the war and the aftermath, they rebuilt everything better than before.