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Looking through Adam Tooze's "Wages of Destruction" the first chapter has a chart about the economic growth of Germany from the 1870s through 1930s and it is clear that the war was a huge blow to their economy during it. The recovery started immediately after it ended and then collapsed again due to the reparations payments and inflation of the early 1920s. Then again there was the late 1920s recovery that got them back to their 1913 peak before the Great Depression wiped things out yet again. Clearly without the war and aftermath there would have been steady growth that left them far richer than they were at their peak inter-war economic position, but how much of that was due to the loss of so many young men that would have been the next generation of workers and inventors? How much of that was due to the breakdown in finance and trade? What about for the rest of Europe? Even Britain, which was proportionally and relatively the least damaged of the major powers of Europe was still badly impacted by WW1, the only nation that gained was the US, a fact I think not really appreciated as it was the Great War and profits from that that set America and American industry (financial and manufacturing) up for superpower status. So what did the human losses alone cost Europe from WW1?
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