And yet W Germany rose to the most dominant economy in Europe by 1970. Britain was not and did not. The key difference was Germany embraced free markets, and Britain turned away from free markets.
How about Japan? Bombed, burned, and nuked to the ground. An island nation with no natural resources. By the 1970s it rebounded to be the leading industrial powerhouse behind the US.
Have any communist countries achieved such success? Any socialist ones?
> Have any communist countries achieved such success? Any socialist ones?
I don't know why you're fixated on this. Again: nobody in this thread has made this claim. The only thing under discussion is whether it's reasonable to naively treat postwar Europe's recovery as a triumph of capitalism, which it isn't.
In other words: a decent chunk of the Marshall Plan money that the US dropped on Britain was in effect cover for existing debts, meaning that it not directly applied to industrial production or reconstruction in the ways that boosted West Germany (and France, Greece, etc.).