This month, a united democratic Germany marks the 70th anniversary of its constitution: the Grundgesetz, or Basic Law. The lengthy document—one version of the English text runs 135 printed pages—was composed under Allied supervision in 1948 and 1949. The final text was completed May 8, 1949; approved by the British, French, and U.S. occupying authorities on May 12, 1949; and entered into effect May 23, 1949. Its first article begins, “Human dignity shall be inviolable. To respect and protect it shall be the duty of all state authority.”

Read: Germany is testing the limits of democracy

In 1949, it must have seemed highly uncertain whether the new German state could possibly honor those words. Impoverished and dismembered, its cities crowded with refugees driven from their homes, its standing in the world disgraced by aggression and genocide—Germany’s most likely fate seemed rapid descent into state failure. Milton Mayer observed the unanimous conviction of his German interlocutors that never again in their lives would they live as securely and comfortably as they had under Nazi rule before the start of war in 1939.

And yet, the state flourished and the constitution endured. Over the next 70 years, Germany honored its pledge to human dignity. It atoned for its crimes, found peace with its neighbors, recovered the eastern states from communism, and consolidated an advanced liberal democracy. Germany is hardly problem-free on this milestone anniversary. Yet the once-rickety Bundesrepublik has met the test of time and success. The constitution—originally viewed as only a provisional document—has become the foundation of a united German state. How was this accomplished?

It would seem an important question. The success of the German democratic transition could offer insights to others overcoming dark chapters in their past. Yet the topic is strangely under-discussed.

Instead, scholars of Germany produce and consume a large and accumulating body of literature concerning fault and failure. The hypocrisies and limits of postwar de-Nazification are minutely examined. And it’s true: For decades after 1945, ex-Nazis held dominant roles in German medicine, law, and academia; the civil service; and even the military. (Erich von Manstein, who planned the attack through the Ardennes that smashed the French army in 1940, helped organize the new West German army after serving only four years of his 18-year sentence for war crimes in the Eastern Front.)

The culture and society of postwar Germany stand under perpetual accusation. Left-wing artists and intellectuals have arraigned the materialism, conservatism, and conformism of postwar Germany as a continuation of the kitschy culture of Nazism. Conservatives riposte by indicting the violence, anti-Semitism, and contempt for institutions of the German Far Left as a continuation of the anti-democratic ideology of Nazism. (German leftists marked the anniversary of Kristallnacht in 1969 with an attempted bombing of the rebuilt Jewish Community Center in West Berlin. German left-wing terrorists were among the hijackers of the airliner rescued by Israeli special forces at Entebbe, Uganda, in 1976.)