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Comment by FireBeyond

4 days ago

Crediting the US for Germany's post-WWII transition is a bit of a stretch. There were quite a few more players involved.

Considering the Soviet strategy of stripping assets from the East and the fact that Britain and France were broke and in shambles - yes, the Marshall plan deserves great credit. To this day East German states remain the poorest in the nation.

  • To be fair they had kind of started implementing the Morgenthau Plan until they realized that maybe it wasn't the best idea (and the British played a significant role in convincing the US government about that...)

    1945 to ~1947 were very rough in Germany even in the allied occupation zones (and that was at least partially an outcome of a conscious decision by the allies to not allow German industry to recover)