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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Being in the center of Europe where all inter-European trade comes through certainly helped.
One thing overlooked most of the time when saying “Germany lost two world wars” is Germany TOOK ON THE WORLD twice. As in, it was not guaranteed they would lose.
Imagine the industrial base to accomplish that. In fact, the division into East and West was prolonged precisely due to Soviet Russia wanting them to rebuild slower.
They’re a big country with very productive citizens, so they’re always going to be doing well economically as long as trade is somewhat free and they’re able to acquire the resources they need, which they are.
The lesson one needs to learn is this: prosperity has nothing to do with wars. Good governance and free trade are all that is needed. It is plausible to fight a war to achieve these, but I’m not familiar with it ever being the case.
The most common answer will probably be the Marshall-Plan but that is actually narrow-sighted and an incomplete answer.
Germany always had a strong academia which made it possible for them to be on the front of a lot of developments and inventions. The US got hold of many German patents after W2 for example that accelerated their own status and development and where not based on their own merits.
The Marshall-Plan definitely helped purely on the financial side which is only a single aspect of the process. Strong educational structures, affordable academia etc are all other aspects that made this development possible.
Stephen Ambrose wrote in, I think, Citizen Soldier, one of the things the GI’s noted about the civilians when they advanced into Germany was they didn’t wait for anyone to come help them clean up the debris once they were behind the front line. They just got to work (compared to other countries where they waited for someone to come help them), and it was something the GI’s said they admired about the German people.
>…they were directly responsible for the evilest person to ever govern in this part of the world.
Stalin has entered the chat.
In addition to the other comments, consider how Germany got as far as they did in both wars despite geographically being in one of the worst places in Europe for ambitions of conquest, surrounded on both sides by powerful enemies.
They were considered one of the strongest economies in Europe well before the wars, to the point that after the German states united in the 1870s many countries considered that it would be be better to go to war sooner rather than later before their economic might grew too large to stop.
The wars set them back heavily, but Germany wasn’t utterly destroyed, and the building blocks of that economy didn’t disappear after the war. In West Germany, anyway. East Germany didn’t fare nearly as well under Soviet leadership, which might be another topic for you to look into.
Marshall Plan and a strong, deep foundation in science, engineering, work ethic, and industrial production.
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