A Challenge, Not a Sentence: Post-War Reconstruction of Germany
Recently, US presidential candidate Donald Trump, during a campaign event in North Carolina, delivered a speech on the state of affairs in Ukraine, where he manipulated facts and, in fact, openly lied to his supporters twice. Trump claimed that most of the country no longer exists, adding that Ukraine as such is already gone. He also stated that it would take "hundreds of years" to rebuild the war-torn Ukraine, further suggesting that it would be impossible to restore the country: "There won’t be enough money to rebuild it, even if the whole world comes together."
These assertions by the controversial Republican candidate are easily refuted by historical examples of other European countries that suffered significant destruction during World War II. For example, Germany, the country with the largest economy in the EU today, was practically in ruins in the spring of 1945, but that didn’t prevent it from becoming, within a decade, the "showcase" of Western Europe and a model of the advantages of a capitalist economic system over a socialist one.
The bombing of Dresden in February 1945 by the British and American air forces left an indelible impression on the American science fiction writer Kurt Vonnegut. As a prisoner of war at the time, Vonnegut took part in clearing the debris of Dresden, which had been virtually wiped off the face of the earth – this dramatic experience runs like a red thread through all his major anti-war novels, from Slaughterhouse-Five, dedicated specifically to the destruction of Dresden, to The Sirens of Titan and Cat's Cradle. Not only Vonnegut but also many other Europeans and Americans who witnessed the fall of the Third Reich were convinced that the country would not recover from its severe war wounds for a long time.
On 8 May 1945, Hitler's Germany signed the Act of Capitulation. According to the research on Germany's demographic losses by military historian Rüdiger Overmans, the number of German soldiers killed on all fronts amounted to 5.318 million, with civilian losses ranging from 1.4 million to 3.6 million. World War II cost Germany dearly: about 270 billion dollars (at the 1945 exchange rate) were spent on military actions, more than 4 million people lost their homes, about 34,000 km of railway tracks were destroyed, and numerous cities, including Berlin, lay in ruins. Adjusted for today's exchange rate, Germany paid over 70 billion euros in reparations for Nazi war crimes and the material damage they inflicted. In 1949, the country was divided between the USSR and the Allies into two states – the GDR, which joined the Eastern Bloc, and the FRG, which remained under US-British patronage.
Divided Germany became the epicentre of the confrontation between two ideologies and a "showcase" for demonstrating the superiority of one political system over the other. While the socialist model of the GDR proved to be a complete failure, the story of the FRG, which eventually became the "backbone" of both modern Germany and the European Union, deserves special attention.
The West German or Rhine Economic Miracle did not happen by itself, and at first, it did not seem like a miracle to the German citizens of that difficult period. However, the results speak for themselves – who now can recall without a shudder the East German cars “Trabant” or “Wartburg”? Meanwhile, the FRG-produced Volkswagen Beetle, one of the symbols of successful neoliberal reforms, still travels the world's roads today.
The basis of the economic and political reforms implemented in post-war West Germany was the Marshall Plan and the reforms of Minister of Economics Ludwig Erhard and German Chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
The Marshall Plan, or the "European Recovery Program," aimed at rebuilding the war-torn European economy, reducing inter-state barriers, economically integrating the European continent, eliminating trade barriers, modernising industry, introducing modern business management, and driving communists and socialists out of power structures, contributing to the overall development of Europe. The transformation of Western Europe into the political, economic, and military foothold of the United States was also dictated by the growing confrontation with the USSR and the approach of the Cold War. The financial aid of the Marshall Plan was distributed among the participating countries approximately per capita, but priority was given to major industrial states, as their recovery was essential for the overall revival of Europe. West Germany became the third-largest recipient of funds under the Marshall Plan, after Great Britain and France. It is also worth noting that the reparations for Holocaust crimes, which Konrad Adenauer paid to the Jewish victims, amounted to more than half the subsidies received by West Germany under the Marshall Plan.
The beginning of West Germany's economic growth is considered to be the 1948 financial reform in the Trizone (the economic union of the American and British occupation zones, to which France later joined), which was overseen by Erhard. The currency reform, during which the Reichsmark was replaced by the Deutschmark, was tough, confiscatory, but effective, freeing the country from depreciated cash savings and ending inflation. This was followed by the abolition of state planning and centralised price policies, granting entrepreneurs freedom of action and launching the market economy. The result of these reforms was the transformation of West Germany into one of the most developed countries in Europe by the mid-1950s.
Speaking of modern Germany, it is worth noting that it was one of the active initiators in creating the European Union long before the fall of the Berlin Wall and the unification of the FRG and the GDR. The famous Coal and Steel Treaty was signed by Adenauer in Paris in 1951 – it laid the foundation for the emergence of the "United States of Europe," which had been talked about by Americans since the War of Independence. Today’s Germany is the main industrial and financial locomotive of Europe, the largest economy in the European Union (and the world, behind only the USA, Japan, and China), accounting for over 3% of the global GDP.
This country is the main donor to the entire European Union, and, after Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Germany became the largest donor and military ally of Ukraine in continental Europe and will likely become one of the leading participants in Ukraine’s post-war reconstruction.
As we can see, war and destruction are not a sentence for a country. They are a challenge for the government and society to build a better world.