I think Germany is probably the most impressive one. Lost both World wars, had to deal with the East West unification and is now the biggest economy in Europe which is crazy to think about.

Eh almost none of WW1 was fought in German soil so they came out of WW1 with most of their economic capacity intact minus several million young men.

And World War 2 saw a complete leveling of most of the country…

But then massive investment by the US.

Sure but parent comment is blowing off a lot of factors working against Germany’s spectacular recovery lol. “Several million young dead men” is a bit of an understatement too

but, owing to cultural changes, it turns out that women can also perform the work necessary for an economy to function.

Losing millions of your own population isn’t something that can be brushed off.

It’s not like those women were doing nothing before, so something else gets deprioritized.

We also had a mass-hunger event in Eastern Romania in 1947, partly as a result of the war and partly because of a dreadful drought season.