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.