Luftwaffe Myths

[Jan Gazda]

Franek,

maybe it’s just me but I can’t get rid off the impression that the bottom line of this one and some other posts of you is the feeling that the Germans were not punished hard enough for the evils of WW2. These are fully legitimate sentiments given the horrible suffering your country went through during the war (although some could consider it little immature given the time that has passed since then) but still from purely economist’s point of view there is compelling evidence that post-war economic development of European countries isn’t correlated to their 1945´s economic situation. The German economic miracle would have happened anyway with reparations or without them. For closer examination of post-war economic resurgence see s Europe’s Postwar Growth by Ch. Kindleberger or Quantitative Aspect of Post-war European Growth by van Ark and Crafts ( much too technical in terms of statistics I am afraid).


Jan