...and/or instead treat their countries as conquered territories?
I was thinking the other day about the whole Make America Great Again thing, and to most of the people in that movement, that era of "greatness" was the postwar economic boom. But in reality, part of the reason for said boom was because there wasn't really any economic competition from Europe and Japan because they were too busy picking up the pieces from the Second World War. Also, the thing that makes some people feel better about the US flexing its military muscles is that once our enemies surrender, we help them rebuild.
But, what if in the case of the former Axis powers, the US/UK decided not to be the better man? What if they decided the best way to keep the former Axis powers from rising again is to leave them to climb their way out of the holes they dug themselves into or keep them under the Allied thumb? No Marshall Plan, no restoration of sovereignty to Japan.
Would America still be "great"? Would the Cold War have been exacerbated by uprisings (people gotta be free) again the Allied occupation?