German Economic Miracle - Cold War DOCUMENTARY

Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video on the German Economic Miracle - Wirtschaftswunder, as in the aftermath of the destructive World War, West Germany still occupied by the allied powers attempts to rise up and manages to do that on the back of the so-called ordoliberalism and the American Marshall Plan.

#ColdWar #GermanEconomicMiracle #Wirtschaftswunder

[adude]

A typical german village is consists of a church, a town hall, and two world leading companies.

[lowersaxon]

As a German economist I can only say that this video is of very good quality. True, instructive and balanced.

[arizonabusinessleague]

Researching WW2 it utterly shocks me that the economy was doing even that well. It looked like the entire country got leveled, not just 22% of housing and 1/3 of manufacturing.

[valentinstoyanov]

It took Western Germany a few years to recover from the devastation of the WW2 (and WWI). Eastern Germany however has still not fully recovered from the devastation of the Communism... The scars of Communism (economic, institutional and in terms of mindset) will be visible in Eastern Europe for a long time.

[JenniferinIllinois]

My previous bell button became worthless and a new one was created. Unfortunately it produces 93% less notifications though. 😉

[BeWe]

Ironically that now foreigners are often wrong-footed when they realize that everything is closed here on Sundays

[michaelporzio]

A good detail of the rebuilding of West Germany would be how they preserved and reconstructed destroyed buildings to preserve their cultural heritage instead of leveling all the rubble and starting from scratch. Women were prominent in this work, the so-called "trummerfrau" or "rubble women" The Altstadt "old city" of Nurnberg is a prime example of this rebuilding.

[pawlof]

my grandpa was a child during the war.
When I ask him about the war he always tells the story of how he ripped off to amarican soldiers of by trading some flowers end 10 eggs in exchange of 10 liters of petroleum. He is a fucking legend

[VarangianGuard]

I am neither an economist nor am I a German citizen, but neither of those things matters in the face of such amazing data and hard historical facts.
Thank you for the marvelous channel and wonderful videos.

[erikbergquist]

Very interesting video. Would be nice to see a video about the german economic boom up until the 80s. :)

[Rickwmc]

Banks and corporations allowed West Germany to recover because they didn't want to repeat the Versalles reparations of the 1920's. In the nuclear age, West Germany would be militarily impotent even with a standing army but its economic recovery was crucial to the European recovery.

[snupmadra]

My grandfather went to the Spring Show in Dublin in 1950 and there were several German made agricultural implements on show. An absolute miracle given that only 3 years earlier they didn't even have a currency.

[tomaszskowronski]

funny how Germany lost the war, yet won in the long run, meanwhile countries that got into the Soviet sphere won, but to this day can't catch up and probably never will.

[alexcheremisin]

I think some graphics could benefit this episode, being so heavy on numbers and percents I found myself loosin track and rewatching some parts.
Great content as always.

[danielwalker]

Great episode, but surprised you never mention the expulsion of Germans from eastern europe (the largest mass migration ever) and how that affected the economy (with preexisting housing and food shortages). Also Germany lost a lot of territory to Poland and the USSR (and of course the Sudetenland and Austria) so comparing industrial and farm production prewar to postwar needs a significant asterisk. A more interesting statistic might be productivity per given region. Germany also came to an agreement with Israel to financially compensate for the Holocaust which was controversial (b/c how can money ever compensate for that), but significantly aided the nascent state when it fought its neighbors. I'm also curious about the recovery of the Communist block countries which also dealt with their own population transfers and post-war poverty.

[Yora]

Infrastructure can be rebuild in a few years.
Knowhow takes generations to build up.

Avoiding a brain drain after the war was crucial.

[EuropeanQoheleth]

First another video about one of my morbid curiosities; Operation Gladio and now a video about something I genuinely like. This channel truly is one of the best.

[gabbyvillocillo]

Hey! I love your videos! I was wondering if you could do videos on the following topics:

1. Singapore, Lee Kuan Yew, and how it became prosperous.

2. South Korea, its coup d' etat, miilitary junta, and its prosperity.

3. The Philippines, what happened post-war, Martial Law, and how its economy tanked.

[fruitycigar]

This is a comeback story that I can never tire of learning about.

[urbanplanner]

"Morgenthau made his most significant contribution as Chairman of the Bretton Woods Conference in New Hampshire, in 1944."