A description of Italy after the Gothic Wars and Lombard Invasion:
Sounds a lot like much of TTL Europe after the End of the Third Reich.
Again, I honestly think the Thirty Years War would be a better comparison.
While there are many ways to interpret the Thirty Years War, I look at it as an example of how modernity doesn't necessarily breed progress. The gradual decline of feudalism and the rise of modern tech was followed by unimaginable conflict and brutality in Europe for 30 years, in which every faction imaginable committed horrific atrocities, even those ruled by relatively benign people like Gustavus Adolphus, with the worst devastation striking a decimated Holy Roman Empire.
A few centuries later, the even more modern Europe saw even worse atrocities, led by a unified version of the Holy Roman Empire.
They might even call the combined WW1 and WW2 period the 46 years war (1914-1960)
Probably most of Europe after WW2 was even in worse condition than Italy after Gothic Wars. Probably even Goths themselves would had been horrified about nazis.
Especially as a fair portion of the mess was the Byzantines fault. After taking the west the Goth's mostly maintained the Roman culture, civilisation and infrastructure (excepting in Britain which had imploded generations before). They just accepted they couldn't hold an entity that big together and broke it into more manageable chunks.
Then Justinian came calling, made a huge mess that wreaked everything and left Italy wide open to Lombard attack.
In contrast the Nazis destroyed for the sake of destruction and burned most of their Empire down themselves before the invaders even got there.
TTL Historians will say things like this when they comment on the devastation of Europe.
"For generations, Europeans thought of themselves as superior. How much of an irony that the most civilized society in Europe would commit the greatest barbarity since the Mongols, but even the Khans could show mercy to their vassals. The Nazis most bombastic statements on their own supposed greatness followed their monstrous destruction."
"The legacy of Hitler is to make the word 'civilization' a dirty word. For a small tribe in Namibia could do far less damage than a nation-state armed with science."
