Not only did they lose the two World Wars, they were directly responsible for the evilest person to ever govern in this part of the world. How did they go from losing WW1, economy collapsing, then losing another World War, to then become one of the world’s biggest economies?
Similar question for Japan, although they “only” lost one.
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They received a lot of help from the allies in the reconstruction era especially true in west Germany due to fears of it siding with the communists. East Germany was way behind compared to the west since it was more or less controlled by the soviets. Japan also had a lot of American help in its reconstruction.
Because America helped rebuild the Countries post war so that they did not fall back into fascism.
You need to research the US policy towards these countries post WW2.
After WW1, Germany was essentially forced to pay for the cost of the war and more as reparations. This tanked their economy as they printed money to pay off the insurmountable debt. This obviously creates animosity towards these countries, this coupled with poor economic conditions paved the road for Hitlers rise to power and inevitably WW2.
Learning from this mistake, the US made it a priority to help Japan and Germany rebuild after the war. This also helped ease post war tensions and is arguably the reason why the world entered into a period of relative peace and prosperity afterwards.
As others have already responded, the US spent a lot of resources post WW2 to rebuild those countries into modern capitalist democracies, and that was a big part of it.
But also worth noting that while those countries did suffer a lot of losses of people and infrastructure during those world wars, they were both reasonably advanced and industrialized countries going into WW2, and it’s not like they lost all of that knowledge during the war.
They still had a lot of engineers, scientists, etc. to help with rebuilding. They had a reasonably well educated workforce to get their economy moving again, especially with all of the help they got from the US.
A lot of the stuff you need for production (factories, office buildings, raw materials extraction equipment, industrial transportation, etc) was destroyed in the war but a lot wasn’t. And setting that aside it’s not as though the people who were capable of great economic activity prior to and during WW2 suddenly lost their expertise and will to work. All they needed was a decade or so to rebuild and some financial assistance in the form of foreign investment (primarily from America). You’ll want to read about the difference between west and east Germany in the post war period. East Germany did not come roaring back to life in the way west Germany did.
One factor about Germany that perhaps isn’t as well recognized is that the German education and scientific community dominated the world in the late 1800 to early 1900.
If anyone wanted to be somebody in the world of science at the time, it was almost a necessity to go to a German university and to be admitted in their academic circles. Modern chemical industrial processes, mathematics, physics, rocketry etc were areas where the Germans were at the forefront.
In short, they had a high degree of education and lots of smart people.
There are tons of other factors, of course.
Germany is huge with a large, educated population, and lots of raw materials. Blowing up a bunch of their stuff and killing a bunch of their dudes set them back for a long time, but the building blocks of a successful economy were still there. Rich farmland, mineral deposits, the factories that didn’t explode, etc.
Pre WW1, and pre WW2 after they built back up, Germany was the scientific hub of the world and the economic powerhouse of Europe so they had a lot of institutional knowledge intact after the war.
Not to mention the allies helped west Germany rebuild afterwards, same with Japan.
I heard someone describe how Great Britain had a bigger problem with adapting to post war economic changes because the industrial properties were largely intact after WW2. Germany had the dubious advantage of being bombed massively and they didn’t have to adapt buildings and deal with lease problems and attached neighbouring buildings designed for 40 to 100 or 150 years before in the stream age or earlier .. everything was brand new.
– A lot of people believed a main reason for ww2 was stiff war reparations from ww1. So they enacted the martial plan to help rebuild Germany after the war.
– Germany was an educated country who was used to laws and know how to run an economy. The knowledge mostly remained after the war so it was comparatively easy to hit the ground running.
>directly responsible for the evilest person to ever govern in this part of the world
Sir .. you might want to visit some history lessons again
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