. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Germany is currently the world’s 4th largest economy based on GDP (exhibit #1). 

Moreover, a large percentage of Germany’s working-age men were dead. At the time, observers thought that West Germany would have to be the biggest client of the U.S. welfare state; yet, twenty years later its economy was envied by most of the world. And less than ten years after the war people already were talking about the German economic miracle.