@sunsporter1649 You’re lying. But then I know you use your many alts on here to try and deflect.

@ron122 Sounds like you are the one crying because you know it is true.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow love to know the source of your comment about the GDR economy.

@meJess I don't have a 40 year old peer reviewed paper to hand right now but I can look it up.

As for reparations that can be found in just about any history book. West Germany didn't really pay reparations. The west seized some German overseas assets (for example the USA seized the American branch of the Agfa photographic company) at the start of the war and called it done.

In East Germany entire factories were dismantled and carted off to the USSR as reparations for Operation Barbarossa.

East Germany also suffered worse from the saturation bombing campaigns like Dresden was basically erased.

The USSR unlike the USA also didn't have an equivalent to the Marshall Plan sending billions of free money to Eastern Germany like the Americans did in West Germany and most of Western Europe post war.

So the two Germanies started from very lopsided starting points. West Germany essentially started half way to the finish line.

@PicturesOfABetterTomorrow so basically capitalism was able to support a thriving industrial export economy in west Germany whilst socialism could not support the east, which led to stagnation, a wall to prevent people leaving, and finally the collapse of the state.

@Elessar I could never live with myself . . 🤦‍♀

@SunshineGirl That's what makes you a decent person.