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Comment by immibis | Hacker News Reader

Mostly because the Allies took over and invested a bunch of money into them developing in ways that didn't involve fascism.

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That's not even remotely what happened

History disagrees with your bold statement.

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

No it doesn't. They didn't "invest", they took everything that wasn't bolted to the ground, and then they took that too. A third of the country was taken away and millions of Germans displaced.

My father worked as a mechanical engineer in West Germany after the war. He told me the French removed all the machines from the factories and took them to France, then the Americans installed much better new machines in their place.

The Marshall Plan was a real thing.

My father also told me that before the Americans decided on the Marshall Plan, they considered other plans (also named for American generals IIRC) one of which involved sterilizing all German men.

hollerith says >My father worked as a mechanical engineer in West Germany after the war. He told me the French removed all the machines from the factories and took them to France, then the Americans installed much better new machines in their place.

The Marshall Plan was a real thing. <

So damned funny!!8-)) The phrase "Grasping defeat from the jaws of victory!" comes to mind.

France received aid from the US, too. An unreliable source I just consulted says France got twice as much as West Germany got from the Marshall Plan.

But yeah, transporting those old machines back to France was probably a waste of Paris's time.

Give us your truth on it then I genuinely interested.

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