The Marshall Plan, 1948.

Just google it. Tons of material out there. Wirtscaftswunder

BigJim49 AustinNowDallas said:

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Ten years after the war in Frankfurt still a lot of two story houses with rubble from bombs - living on first floor .

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There was still rationing in Great Britain nine years after the war ended--and it was among the victors.

A good read on this is "Year Zero: A History of 1945" by Ian Burma. It covers European and Asian geographies as well.

My Grandfather said you could tell when you went from France to Germany. The French would all sit around and beg for food after the battle had passed through their towns. There would be fighting still on the outskirts of German towns and the towns folk would already be in the streets cleaning up the mess. He spent a year in Austria after the war. They were mainly there to keep the Russians out. They were occupiers. They didn't build or repair anything. Finally got to come home in December 1946.

Wildman15 said:

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This question can also be extended to Japan (which I dont have the answer). Obviously, we stuck around after their surrender.

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I don't know the answer for Japan either, but I imagine it was pretty quick.


In fact both the Japanese and Germans are both very efficient and focused people when presented with a task. I can see where they got their delusions of genetic dominance.


I think Japan and Germany skewed our perception of how easy it was to nation build for decades to come. The Afghan and Iraqi people certainly don't compare favorably to either society.

OK. Fightin' Texas Aggie German major here. Gotta chime in.

The Marshall Plan was not the largest factor in the rebuilding of Germany. This guy has it right:

Quote:

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Just google it. Tons of material out there. Wirtscaftswunder

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The Wirtschaftswunder, or "Economic Wonder" was a rapid economic recovery in Germany and Austria in the 1950s. The heroes of this story are German chancellor Adenauer and economic guru Ludwig Erhard. Erhard was a genius, and during the war began doing economic studies on how to rebuild the country. Let me restate this: DURING the war. He was building models which assumed Germany would lose. Therefore he was basically committing an offense possibly punishable by death.

Erhard was an economic liberal (in the classic liberal sense). He completely rejected the National Socialist economic model, which included - surprise, surprise - a healthy dosage of socialism. This included huge tax rates in the 90 percent range for incomes above a certain amount. He basically cut taxes, abolished price fixing. He later became the 2nd Chancellor of Germany after Adenauer and continued German growth throughout his term, which ended in 1966. So he was basically running the German economy for over 20 years on economic lines similar to those of the Austrian school of economics.

Adenauer gets some credit, but Erhard was basically the German Milton Friedman.

As for the original post, I think he was talking more about physical rebuilding. Let me say that took a LOT longer.

In 1992, I lived in Nuremberg. It was the Nazi's symbolic home, being the site of the massive Reichsparteitage, the Nazi rallies you see in films like Triumph of the Will. The old city was a beautiful medieval town with half-timbered houses, beautiful and ornate churches and a distinctive castle with large round towers.

In January 1945, the Royal Air Force wiped the city off the map. Nuremberg got one of the heaviest bombings of the war. The question for city officials was whether to just rebuild as they could, or try to rebuild their historic city the way it was. Most German towns did a mix of the two, saving key historic buildings and churches but being less puritan about private buildings. Frankfurt built almost nothing back, and now it's a horrid modern city that looks like Houston. But Nuremberg built everything back identically to what it had looked like from the 1400s to 1800s. It took them 38 years to rebuild. Even so, that's when it was declared done, and when I lived there, a lot had not been updated. They hadn't touched the Nazi buildings, which the US army had taken over and would not give back to them until 94 or 95. The large Kongresshalle, which was supposed to be a big meeting buidling - its' a big U Shape wider than the US capitol, was never finished. The inside of the U was, when I was there, the city impound lot. The U structure itself had some parts that were finished more or less. One of the large rooms had been turned into a music venue. I saw Pearl Jam there in June 1992 when they were just getting big.

Most other German cities were similar. Hamburg was a mix of old and new, but when I was there in 98, there was still a lot of burned out hulks and ruins along the harbor front. Dresden of course, got some of the worst bombing, and the Soviets buil the magnificent Zwinger palace back identically, but left the famous Frauenkirche church as a gigantic pile of rubble with a sign on it that said, "This is what Kapitalism does." After the fall of communism, the city fathers dusted off the old plans from the 1700s and then began excavating the mound. When I was there in 1998 as a freelancer for the Berliner Zeitung newspaper, they were systematically numbering and identifying all of the pieces they found, statue by statue, stone by stone. The chuch took 400 years to build the first time. They finished it the second time in 2005, so about 12 years or so from dig to open to the public.

Berlin was another story. It was only partially rebuilt until they finally tore down the wall. They started the serious rebuild while I was living there in 1998, and it's ongoing today, but the city is completely transformed.

DogCo84 said:

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I found this US Army Historical text pretty fascinating:

THE U.S. ARMY IN THE OCCUPATION OF GERMANY 1944-1946

It is amazing that as early as 1942, the Allies were planning for the occupation, military government and recovery of a defeated Germany shows immense forethought vs the non-planning for "what comes after" in our more recent military endeavors.

Interestingly, it was estimated that Germany would have to be occupied for up to 4 generations to remove the remaining Nazi influence. My memory is that the occupation officially ended in 1985. Many would argue that 4 generations wasn't long enough.

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The reason for the US Mil to be in Germany until 1985 was the Russians. Had nothing to do with the Nazis.

Hitler was never intending for world domination. That's a legacy of a 80 year old propaganda campaign. He wanted to dominate Europe, enslave the Russians and remove the Jews (dead or alive - in the end he chose dead, but alive would have been just as good). He was too much of a provincial Austrian from a podunk town outside of Linz to really contemplate dominating the whole world. His only serious foray outside of Europe (and Russia was Europe), was to save Mussolini's butt in Africa. He had no plans to move south from there, cross over to Brazil and come north. Or go anywhere else. He wanted to conquer Russia and then sit back and build gigantic buildings with his buddy Albert Speer.

Of course, I understand "dominate" is not the same as conquer, but the case is still valid. His idea of winning included keeping the British Empire and really didn't even consider America except to the extent that he wanted an economy independent of American "Jewish" capital.

And guess what, despite what you may have heard, neither the Germans nor the Japanese viewed victory as forcing Americans to speak their language. If we would have lost, we would not be speaking German or Japanese. We might have been stunted a little technologically, so perhaps we'd still even be speaking English instead of this LOL and LMAO bull*****