How was Germany able to get back on its feet so fast after the losses it suffered in WW1 and be completely rearmed for WW2?
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They were forced to get rid of wasteful projects, like most of their navy and colonies.
Spent the entire interwar years training officers, creating government sponsored paramilitary organisations. And a few years before the war they started to spend like crazy on rearmament and expanding the army. And taking over heavily armed Czechoslovakia helped.
Hitler and his economic plans. Hitler and his economic policies were actually celebrated around the world for a while.
Because they invaded other countries in WWI, and there were no strategic bombers or missiles back then, so Germany wasn’t really damaged. That’s also why Germans thought that there must’ve been some kind of betrayal when they had to surrender – it *felt* like they were winning. But they were really just plowing more and more blood and treasure into keeping the land they conquered in the first months of WWI. When they couldn’t keep up with the production of the WWI allies (including the US), they had to surrender on terms that included disarmament, separation of German populations, and reparations, to ensure they wouldn’t try attacking again.
When Hitler took over, he started rearming and refusing to pay the reparations, and their industrial base was still strong enough that they could quickly prepare for another war, especially once they reunited with the other German-speaking countries. So you might think of the European part of WWI and WWII as two parts of a single war, with a long cease fire in the middle.
Tl;Dr – Germany surrendered before their industrial might was destroyed in WWI, so in WWII, they still had the pieces necessary to resume the war.
I’m sure I’ve seen in the documentaries series Battlefields that the Germans were training pilots in Russia as before WW2 the Russians and Germans were allies, the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact I think was the name of it.
Among what everyone else is saying, the US gave them 10 millions dollars (around), helping their economy tremendously for a period of time
I just want to add that Hitler’s rearmament and the German economy was not sustainable. It relied on massive deficit spending (including illegal methods like MEFO bills) and plunder stolen during the Second World War and prior invasions to keep going. The Nazi economy would’ve collapsed in on itself pretty quickly if the second world war had not happened.
Soviet Union support. Agreement for cooperation was signed in 1919: Soviet Union got army training, technologies (wasn’t officially recognized until 1934 so no other significant sources) and help with initial industry development; Germany got resources (metals, food, oil, coal etc.), built dozens military factories on the Soviet territory to bypass Treaty of Versailles (research and production) and received facilities to train tank crews, pilots and officers. They cooperated later in partition of Europe. And even when later Nazi were out of bombs to attack London, USSR gave bombs too.
Additionally, don’t forget— immediately after he was elected as chancellor in 1933, a new, comparatively low-cost work force emerged and grew—in the concentration camps.
Note that germany was one of the most advanced nations at that time too, with one of the highest educational (if not the highest) levels worldwide. Not only because of the germans, but also the educational level of the jewish population.
One of the reasons they managed to compete in ww2 was quite frankly also because they were decades ahead in research in certain areas.
Part of the reason the us economy exploded was because of the brain drain from German nations.
It was really easy to rally people against the Jews, because they owned a lot, made smart decisions and valued education.
Its a similar principle to what trump is doing in the US.
I’m on steroids & stimulants prescribed by my Drs.
I can see now how the Wermacht vitamin “supplemet” helped them fight and win campaigns
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