Board Thread:General Discussion/@comment-110.146.149.161-20150813074512/@comment-410526-20150908181134

I don't think it's fair to say that Germany "just get lucky." They, along with the rest of Western Europe, got billions of dollars of aid via the Marshall Plan from the US. And this was all as part of an overall effort by the US and friends to keep Western Europe prosperous and create allies in what was a likely battleground (economical, ideological or otherwise) against the Soviets.

West Germany was a hugely important part of Cold War policy for the West, and it was entirely in their interests to keep their economy healthy (for obvious reasons, revolutionary Communism tends to do better in poorer countries).

As for Japan, I similarly don't think it's appropriate to say that they finally began to open up after WWII, or that this was the sole reason for their economic prosperity. While it's true that Japan stepped-up its international trade immensely in the decades following the war, the isolationist period of Japan had ended by the mid-1800s and Japan was trading freely with European powers by 1900. In fact, they had instituted an imperialist/expansionist policy on other Asian countries long before WW2 started.

Like Germany, Japan benefitted hugely from American support who feared that a poor Japan would fall into the Soviet sphere. Also the fact that the Japanese manufacturing industry got a huge boost from the Korean War.

This is not to downplay the contributions of the populations of Germany and Japan themselves, of course. Just that there were other factors at play that worked in their favour.