Reconstruction of Germany

The reconstruction of Germany after World War II was a long process. Germany had suffered heavy losses during the war, both in lives and industrial power. 6.9 to 7.5 million Germans had been killed, roughly 8.26 to 8.86 percent of the population (see also World War II casualties). The country's cities were severely damaged from heavy bombing in the closing chapters of the War and agricultural production was only 35 percent of what it was before the war.

At the Potsdam Conference, the victorious Allies ceded roughly 25 percent of Germany's pre-Anschluss territory to Poland and the Soviet Union. The German population in this area was moved away, together with the Germans of the Sudetenland and the German populations scattered throughout the rest of Eastern Europe. Between 1.5 and 2 million are said to have died in the process, depending on source. As a result, the population density grew in the "new" Germany that remained after the dismemberment.

As agreed at Potsdam, an attempt was made to convert Germany into a pastoral and agricultural nation, allowed only light industry. Many factories were dismantled as reparations or were simply destroyed (see also the Morgenthau Plan). Millions of German prisoners of war were for several years used as forced labor, both by the Western Allies and the Soviet Union.

Beginning immediately after the German surrender and continuing for the next two years, the United States pursued a vigorous program to harvest all technological and scientific know-how, as well as all patents in Germany. John Gimbel comes to the conclusion in his book, Science Technology and Reparations: Exploitation and Plunder in Post-war Germany, that the "intellectual reparations" taken by the U.S. and the UK amounted to close to 10 billion dollars, equivalent to around 100 billion dollars in 2006. (see also Operation Paperclip).

As soon as 1945, the Allied forces worked heavily on removing Nazi influence from Germany in a process dubbed as "denazification".

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