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Comment by XorNot | Hacker News Reader

Actually you just didn't have most of your infrastructure destroyed across the span of civilization's first two large-scale industrial wars and are the beneficiaries of controlling a temperate-climate block of latitude with access to both major oceans and no nearby similarly industrialized neighbors in the span of time those wars happened.

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How did Germany end up with the most robust economy in Europe when it seems like it should have the worst economy since it isn't located in a temperate-climate, it was divided in half for decades and had to reabsorb the poor Eastern half, was destroyed twice, underwent sanctions, etc.? Somehow Germany overcame everything (most of which it brought upon itself of course). Why couldn't France, Italy, Greece, Spain, etc. replicate Germany's success?

Since I can't reply directly to the Marshal plan comments:

The Marshal Plan gave much less money to Germany than to anyone else, per capita.

Greece received, per capita, about 3 times what Germany got. The UK, with a smaller population than Germany, received 3,297 million, while a larger Germany got 1,448 million.

Also, European economic integration and cooperation should not be understated and it's effect on rebuilding germany.

Especially in the early days of the EEC/ECSC, rebuilding (west) germany was important for many other european nations at the time to increase their export markets. (Benelux especially).

They were forced to rebuild all of their infrastructure, in effect modernizing all of it. Additionally, they were forced to ignore military spending while also being the beneficiary of a huge amount of external military spending for the Cold War.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marshall_Plan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Occupation_of_Japan

About 70% of Europe, including Germany, has a temperate climate...

Germany didn't start from zero. Many large companies operating in there have roots precisely in the nazi era. Combine this with the Marshall plan and the insane amount of money pumped by capitalists into destroying East Germany and later on integrating East Germany and you'll see the reasons why Germany benefited from world growth more than other European countries.

AFAIK most large ccompanies that survived from the Nazi era were founded 1870-1920 or so. Notable examples are Siemens, Daimler-Benz, BMW, Zeiss, BASF. A notable counterexample is Volkswagen.

> insane amount of money pumped by capitalists into destroying East Germany

Can you please elaborate a little? I'm wondering about 'destroying' part.

Not most, true; only half of it in the Civil War.

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