To be fair there are examples of unconstitutional behaviour also in many democracies, that theoretically should follow higher standards than authoritarian governments.
Take for example the Guantanamo bay detection camp
In 2005 a judge ruled that
A federal judge ruled Monday that some foreign terror suspects held in Cuba can challenge their confinement in U.S. courts and she criticized the Bush administration for holding hundreds of people indefinitely as “enemy combatants,” saying that doing so unconstitutionally violates their right to due process.
But no one paid for it and Guantanamo bay is still open, bi-partisan executive orders have been issued over the years to keep the operations running.
Obama promised to close it, but didn't (TBF he had the entire Congress against, but in the end he didn't keep on his promise)
In January 2018 the Trump administration signed an executive order to keep Guantanamo open indefinitely.
As of today there are still 40 people detained awaiting justice.
Not to disagree but I believe that the nature of their government, the social democracy, that empowers people and their needs, built up the trust they have in each other and their representatives.
It's also the reason why they accept very high rates of taxation in exchange for public services that actually work and benefit the population.
Depicting Scandinavia as an uniform land where a genetically homogeneous spawn lives is also misleading.
For example in Denmark 86% of the population is Danish descent, same goes for Norway, in Sweden 18% of the population was born in another country.
In Italy, which is not particularly famous for its genetic uniformity, 90% of the population was born in Italy from Italian parents.
What seems uniform in Europe, except for Scandinavia, is the distrust
European countries shows that average trust in the police tends to be higher than trust in the political and the legal systems. And trust in the political system is particularly low – in fact much lower than interpersonal trust for all countries except Switzerland. On the other hand, trust in the police is notably high, and in the majority of European countries people trust the police more than they trust each other
Italy has the highest level of trust in the Mediterranean area, around 30%, while France, Spain and Greece are below 20%.
Netherlands have the same level of Scandinavia (>60%), Germany is around 50%.
My personal belief is that the society trust is directly proportional to the level of social conflict.
Not surprisingly France, where social conflict is quite high (which I don't think is bad per sé) has the lower level of trust in Europe (~18%), except for Romania.
Well, Norway collaborated with the nazis and sympathised for some of their ideas at the time, for example Norway had been experimenting with eugenics programs since the 20s when they started to sterilise mentally hill patients and made it legal in 1934.
But the king of Norway and members of the army escaped to London and directed the resistance from there.
Ask the Jews that owned the houses and nursing homes that were confiscated for the Lebensborn project and the kids that survived it (not many), what they think about it.
Others had it worse doesn't mean they escaped the war and its consequences.
If the eastern block is where you draw the line, you could argue that many parts of Europe escaped the war.
Take for example the Guantanamo bay detection camp
In 2005 a judge ruled that
A federal judge ruled Monday that some foreign terror suspects held in Cuba can challenge their confinement in U.S. courts and she criticized the Bush administration for holding hundreds of people indefinitely as “enemy combatants,” saying that doing so unconstitutionally violates their right to due process.
But no one paid for it and Guantanamo bay is still open, bi-partisan executive orders have been issued over the years to keep the operations running.
Obama promised to close it, but didn't (TBF he had the entire Congress against, but in the end he didn't keep on his promise)
In January 2018 the Trump administration signed an executive order to keep Guantanamo open indefinitely.
As of today there are still 40 people detained awaiting justice.