Had Eastern Europe avoided Communism, how much more developed would it be right now?

The logistics alone would make that option unfeasible for the WAllies.

The distance from Normandy to Berlin is less than 800 miles. The distance from Istanbul to Berlin is over 1,300 miles with extremely difficult terrain for the attackers but excellent terrain for the defending Heer. It would be a bloodbath that would make the OTL Italian campaign look easy.

The WAllies would always pick the shortest possible distance (France) for their major landing on the continent to save themselves time, resources, and men.

You're probably right. They'd lose a lot more men on the front end, but hopefully make it up by approaching Berlin on more attacker-friendly terrain.
 
You're probably right. They'd lose a lot more men on the front end, but hopefully make it up by approaching Berlin on more attacker-friendly terrain.
If the WAllies wanted to reach Berlin through some other avenue besides Normandy, then Italy would be a better option than going through the Balkans. It would still be insanely difficult and would take years of attrition but it is several hundred miles shorter than attacking from Istanbul.
 
WAllies would just land in Spain in that case, so the whole point is moot.


That's always my initial reaction to this topic too, but in that timeline, there's a good chance that Spain has already aligned themselves with the Reich and is heavily defended as well. But having said that, it's always difficult for me to argue with anyone who spells the word "moot" correctly on the internet!
 
That's always my initial reaction to this topic too, but in that timeline, there's a good chance that Spain has already aligned themselves with the Reich and is heavily defended as well. But having said that, it's always difficult for me to argue with anyone who spells the word "moot" correctly on the internet!
Spanish (edit: or rather, more correctly, Iberian) coastline is way too long IMO to properly fortify in time.
 
WAllies would just land in Spain in that case, so the whole point is moot.
That's always my initial reaction to this topic too, but in that timeline, there's a good chance that Spain has already aligned themselves with the Reich and is heavily defended as well. But having said that, it's always difficult for me to argue with anyone who spells the word "moot" correctly on the internet!
In his AANW TL where the Reich had control over the continent and managed to defeat the USSR like in the OP, CalBear addressed the idea of an invasion through Spain (1400 miles from Madrid to Berlin) saying:
We are still talking about the United States and the UK, not The USSR or the Reich. I can not see them invading a neutral power. Even if Franco somehow managed to get the Allies mad enough to invade fighting across the width of Spain, over a substantial mountain range, and then into France with an exposed supply line all that way would be utterly mad.
Once again, I can't imagine the WAllies attempting to land their main force and directing their attention to anywhere besides France since it is the shortest possible distance to the heartland of Germany, less costly and more logistically feasible.
 
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In his AANW TL where the Reich had control over the continent and managed to defeat the USSR like in the OP, CalBear addressed the idea of an invasion through Spain (1400 miles from Madrid to Berlin) saying:

Once again, I can't imagine the WAllies attempting to land their main force and directing their attention to anywhere besides France since it is the shortest possible distance to the heartland of Germany, less costly and more logistically feasible.
I would respectfully disagree.

If we're dealing with crazy hypotheticals, landing in mostly open beaches in Andalusia or Galicia is a lot less "mad" (in CalBears words) than throwing away 12 divisions by having them assault heavily fortified beaches held by 50 enemy divisions.

Mountain ranges (the Pyrenees) are not impenetrable, supply lines wouldn't be that exposed (to what, exactly?) and the distances not that insurmountable - distance from Coruna to Antwerp is ~ the same as that from Berlin to Moscow, with the caveat that supply lines never actually increase, and in fact get shorter, as more and more Atlantic ports closer to Britain get liberated.

edit: also, forcing the Germans to fight in Spain, and Italy, and maybe Greece as well if they skipped on that in order to make Barbarossa work, means they will not have this gigantic reserve available to cover everything from Bordeaux to Denmark (plus the French Mediterranean coast), if the Allies decide to do a follow-up landing there
 
I would respectfully disagree.

If we're dealing with crazy hypotheticals, landing in mostly open beaches in Andalusia or Galicia is a lot less "mad" (in CalBears words) than throwing away 12 divisions by having them assault heavily fortified beaches held by 50 enemy divisions.

Mountain ranges (the Pyrenees) are not impenetrable, supply lines wouldn't be that exposed (to what, exactly?) and the distances not that insurmountable - distance from Coruna to Antwerp is ~ the same as that from Berlin to Moscow, with the caveat that supply lines never actually increase, and in fact get shorter, as more and more Atlantic ports closer to Britain get liberated.

The one problem I've always had with that hypothetical is - which western ports are getting liberated, and how do they get liberated while the Allies are slugging their way across the plains of Spain, then through the Pyrenees, and then halfway across France just to get to where they would have started from if they'd successfully invaded Normandy? I'm not seeing how that works out.

I understand that the Pyrennees are not impenetrable, but that's not the point, because neither are the Normandy beaches. The point is, where are your casualties more profitably spent? Are they better spent on the beaches of Normandy, or the mountains of Northern Spain/Southern France? Because both areas strongly favor the defenders, so it's not like one is automatically superior to the other. Granted, you might lose more men coming through Normandy, but over a longer advance through Spain you're going to lose a lot too.

And, most importantly, it's not just about a straight-up comparison between which plan results in the most initial casualties. Fundamentally, it's about which one has the best chance of success. You come through Normandy, you're going to pay a heavy and bloody price in the first few days and weeks - but once you get past that, you have much more favorable terrain and far shorter supply routes to Berlin than if you come through Spain. Come through Spain, and there are a lot more things that can go wrong than if you come through Normandy (aside from the initial heavy casualties of Normandy). Look at how hard it was to fight our way across France and the Low Countries the first 5 or 8 months after Normandy, and how many casualties we took - would we really have taken fewer casualties if we'd started from Spain than Normandy? How so?

Invading through Spain makes for an easier landing, but I've never really seen a convincing argument for how it makes for an easier overall path to Berlin.
 
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So what if the Soviets are not defeated, the Germans are simply doing better. The Eastern Front still grinds on, but the Russians are rolling back the Germans at a much slower rate. The WAllies still land, since the Germans still have to commit the same amount of forces in the east. Landing in Italy also on schedule, maybe even coupled with a landing in the Balkans. This leads to a different Yalta, and as the WAllies close in on Berlin, Axis minors such as Hungary, Finland or Romania ask for armistisce and switch sides, which may need for the Germans to commit occupation forces, further weakening their positions on all fronts.

A British-American force takes Berlin, Hitler commits suicide and the remaining Wehrmacht leadership, which still has a rather large fighting force in Eastern Poland and the Ukraine asks for peace. The USSR, ever so close to a collapse, also agrees.

The Iron Curtain is roughly on the OTL USSR border, give or take some Polish territories, Königsberg and perhaps Carpathia. They are of course rather pissed, given their great losses, but they are significantly weaker in this case. They would still be offered some compensation, such as Communist Yugoslavia in their sphere of influence, maybe even Romania and the rest of the Balkans(except for Greece), forming a much smaller Eastern Block, let's call it the Sofia Pact.

So now the new Iron Curtain runs on the Soviet border and in the Balkans. Germany may be split up by the WAllies, who knows, there were OTL plans for this. They can also completely disarm them, given that they are no longer on the border.

As for Eastern Europe, I see no reason why the Central European states (an actually useful term in the ATL Cold War, but perhaps they would be considered Western Europe in this case, given how the Iron Curtain is on the traditional East-West border of Catholicism and Orthodoxy) would not achieve a standard of living similar to OTL Austria or Finland, especially with the Marshall Plan and their strategic position to counter the Soviets.

The Soviets being weaker, and no chance to get their hands on German scientists, their grip is weaker on their block, relying more on local Communist leadership to keep them in line, leading to more authority on their side. Think OTL Yugoslavia and Hungary, the Balkans are now the Happiest Barracks, although a hardline Stalinist may stay in power, akin to North Korea, let's say, in Romania, which still has territorial disputes with her western neighbour over the status of Transylvania, since the Wienna borders are still in place, so the area becomes a place of constant tension, much like the Korean Peninsula, but inlike that, it never actually flares up.

The Soviets would instead of Europe focus on the Far East, maintaining good relations with China and probably getting the whole of Korea in their sphere as compensation. With access to Chinese and Korean ports, Asia becomes much more of a hot area in this ATL Cold War. The Communist influence here may even lead to more pronounced Western support to Chiang Kai Shek, leading to the Nationalists keeping at least part of mainland China, which becomes an Eastern Iron Curtain. After a while, it may not become so clear who is leading the Communist block: China or Russia?
 
The one problem I've always had with that hypothetical is - which western ports are getting liberated, and how do they get liberated while the Allies are slugging their way across the plains of Spain, then through the Pyrenees, and then halfway across France just to get to where they would have started from if they'd successfully invaded Normandy? I'm not seeing how that works out.

I understand that the Pyrennees are not impenetrable, but that's not the point, because neither are the Normandy beaches. The point is, where are your casualties more profitably spent? Are they better spent on the beaches of Normandy, or the mountains of Northern Spain/Southern France? Because both areas strongly favor the defenders, so it's not like one is automatically superior to the other. Granted, you might lose more men coming through Normandy, but over a longer advance through Spain you're going to lose a lot too.

And, most importantly, it's not just about a straight-up comparison between which plan results in the most initial casualties. Fundamentally, it's about which one has the best chance of success. You come through Normandy, you're going to pay a heavy and bloody price in the first few days and weeks - but once you get past that, you have much more favorable terrain and far shorter supply routes to Berlin than if you come through Spain. Come through Spain, and there are a lot more things that can go wrong than if you come through Normandy (aside from the initial heavy casualties of Normandy). Look at how hard it was to fight our way across France and the Low Countries the first 5 or 8 months after Normandy, and how many casualties we took - would we really have taken fewer casualties if we'd started from Spain than Normandy? How so?

Invading through Spain makes for an easier landing, but I've never really seen a convincing argument for how it makes for an easier overall path to Berlin.
My assertion was in the context of a concentration of enemy troops in northern France so large, that the landing itself faced a significant risk of failure, not whether it wouldn't have made sense to point OTL's Overlord at Spains beaches.

edit: as to which ports, I would figure these
 
What would the borders be like? Poland alone would have many issues. Would get to the Oder-Neisse Line in whole or would Stettin and much of Silesia remain with Germany? What about the https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Polish–Soviet_border_agreement_of_August_1945? If that didn't happen then would the Soviets retain the land in they swapped for more land for Ukraine? I don't see the Soviets simply collapsing, while the West might clump them together with the Russians after the war as a way to keep anti-Russian feelings in a big part of the country, or to keep Russian nationalists content.
 

Thomas1195

Banned
So what if the Soviets are not defeated, the Germans are simply doing better. The Eastern Front still grinds on, but the Russians are rolling back the Germans at a much slower rate. The WAllies still land, since the Germans still have to commit the same amount of forces in the east. Landing in Italy also on schedule, maybe even coupled with a landing in the Balkans. This leads to a different Yalta, and as the WAllies close in on Berlin, Axis minors such as Hungary, Finland or Romania ask for armistisce and switch sides, which may need for the Germans to commit occupation forces, further weakening their positions on all fronts.

A British-American force takes Berlin, Hitler commits suicide and the remaining Wehrmacht leadership, which still has a rather large fighting force in Eastern Poland and the Ukraine asks for peace. The USSR, ever so close to a collapse, also agrees.

The Iron Curtain is roughly on the OTL USSR border, give or take some Polish territories, Königsberg and perhaps Carpathia. They are of course rather pissed, given their great losses, but they are significantly weaker in this case. They would still be offered some compensation, such as Communist Yugoslavia in their sphere of influence, maybe even Romania and the rest of the Balkans(except for Greece), forming a much smaller Eastern Block, let's call it the Sofia Pact.

So now the new Iron Curtain runs on the Soviet border and in the Balkans. Germany may be split up by the WAllies, who knows, there were OTL plans for this. They can also completely disarm them, given that they are no longer on the border.

As for Eastern Europe, I see no reason why the Central European states (an actually useful term in the ATL Cold War, but perhaps they would be considered Western Europe in this case, given how the Iron Curtain is on the traditional East-West border of Catholicism and Orthodoxy) would not achieve a standard of living similar to OTL Austria or Finland, especially with the Marshall Plan and their strategic position to counter the Soviets.

The Soviets being weaker, and no chance to get their hands on German scientists, their grip is weaker on their block, relying more on local Communist leadership to keep them in line, leading to more authority on their side. Think OTL Yugoslavia and Hungary, the Balkans are now the Happiest Barracks, although a hardline Stalinist may stay in power, akin to North Korea, let's say, in Romania, which still has territorial disputes with her western neighbour over the status of Transylvania, since the Wienna borders are still in place, so the area becomes a place of constant tension, much like the Korean Peninsula, but inlike that, it never actually flares up.

The Soviets would instead of Europe focus on the Far East, maintaining good relations with China and probably getting the whole of Korea in their sphere as compensation. With access to Chinese and Korean ports, Asia becomes much more of a hot area in this ATL Cold War. The Communist influence here may even lead to more pronounced Western support to Chiang Kai Shek, leading to the Nationalists keeping at least part of mainland China, which becomes an Eastern Iron Curtain. After a while, it may not become so clear who is leading the Communist block: China or Russia?
Agree. I can see Czechoslovakia outperforming most of non-Great Power European countries.
 

Zagan

Donor
Had Eastern Europe avoided Communism (for instance, had the Soviet Union fallen in 1941-1942 and the Western Allies would have defeated the Nazis afterwards with the help of a lot of nuclear weapons), how much more developed would it be right now?

Any thoughts on this?
I will not answer the question directly but provide a quick fact: In the Interbellum, Romania received a lot of economic migrants from Italy, Greece, Spain and other countries. After 45 years of Communism, the Romanians are migrating to these countries instead. Sad.
 
Had Eastern Europe avoided Communism (for instance, had the Soviet Union fallen in 1941-1942 and the Western Allies would have defeated the Nazis afterwards with the help of a lot of nuclear weapons), how much more developed would it be right now?
Since there appear to be some problems with my nuke scenario here, what about this instead? : The Western Allies set a trap for the Germans at Sedan in 1940 and cause the Germans to be encircled and destroyed; afterwards, Hitler is overthrown and the anti-Nazi German generals sue for peace on Western terms?

In both cases, the impact of no Communism is vastly outweighed by the different WW2 scenarios.

You need to keep in mind how insanely destructive WW2 was to Eastern Europe and the Western Soviet Union. The region lost its best and brightest by the tens of millions. Its physical infrastructure was wrecked and the psychological damage to the survivors was tremendous. As such, the first scenario, by extending WW2 and Nazi occupation of E. Europe, amplifies these bad effects and the second scenario, due to ending WW2 very early, creates a situation where regardless of the political or economic system imposed post-war, the region would look comparatively utopian.

Just to put this in perspective, Western Europe, which was far less damaged by WW2, still took until 1989 to recover from WW2 economically (it was around this time that Western Europe stopped experiencing what economists call "catch up growth" with countries that had escaped serious war damage).

So if Eastern Europe experienced a WW2 like OTL's, but afterwards Stalin decided not to impose Communist systems in the areas liberated by the USSR, it is still going to have significant difficulties. I would guess economic performance would mirror that of Greece (which experienced "Eastern European" casualty rates OTL but ended up under a non-communist government) though Czechoslovakia I would expect to look more like Finland (Czechoslovakia and Finland experienced similar casualty rates, were both relatively developed pre-war and were both highly integrated into Western European trade networks pre-war).

fasquardon
 

Bulldoggus

Banned
Axis minors such as Hungary, Finland or Romania ask for armistisce and switch sides, which may need for the Germans to commit occupation forces, further weakening their positions on all fronts.
To be fair, the Finns never backed the Nazis, they were just defending their own sovereignty.
 
Note how this thread is consumed by the assumption that there must be a World War II against Germany. If we want to focus on the difference between Eastern Europe suffering Soviet occupation and the potentials of that region without such trauma, doesn't it make more sense to assume there never is a second world war at all?

I think removing Hitler from history, an easy enough thing to accomplish by several means (the surest being violent, but quite probable as he did serve on the front lines in the Great War after all) greatly lowers the probability Germany winds up a continent-conquering monster. Odds are it will become an authoritarian regime with considerable ambition for easy conquests, but a decent alliance system is enough to check that and I do think the Soviet Union would sit immobilized under Stalin, and then back off further from adventurism under his successor--to be fair, the wrong set of successors to Stalin might uncork the genie and set the Soviets on an ill-advised military course. But the one war the Western European powers would be preparing for (not necessarily well prepared) would be to contain or crush the USSR.

OK, so supposing no war in Europe ever, beyond some rather small damned things in the Balkans anyway, which might get nasty but stay in their theatre, is it a slam dunk that Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Yugoslavia, Albania and Romania will all benefit from the superiority of free market capitalism?

I say---no. Some might indeed benefit; Czechoslovakia is well placed, and Romania might be in a fine position if they use their oil revenues and strategic ties with France effectively.

The thing people rarely seem to recall about capitalism is, although in principle it is not a zero-sum game, at any particular moment it operates very much like it is. There is only so much opportunity to go around in any developing world. One can point to various nations that seem to have done very well under capitalism and say to another, less developed nation,"look at Singapore over there! Look at Malaysia! Why can't you be a success like them! For shame!"

But the truth is, it is a race for market position. Whoever gets there first can enjoy advantages and growth, but it does not follow that every nation with similar resources that follows a similar development plan will be able to enjoy the same success as its mentor or exemplary rival.

Why exactly should we expect development of Eastern European nations in a world that emerges slowly from the Depression of the 1930s but without a big war in Europe? Why should capital invest in Polish or Hungarian industry, when the developed nations of the West including Germany are still only partially recovered from their own slump? What markets would Polish industrialists, assuming they aren't overriden by foreign capital calling the tone, invest in specifically, that they aren't cut out of already by prior vested interests?

Czechoslovakia did well before WWII, and I suppose that what oxygen there is in the East to be inhaled by rising industries will tend to be sucked to Bohemia first--if not itself suffocated by a powerful draft of air drawn into Germany!

I see no reason at all to anticipate particularly dynamic growth in Hungary or Yugoslavia.

Romania will enjoy oil income--but note that more often than not that is not capitalized as the basis of a broad economic growth, but rather squandered by the kleptocratic regimes the combination of sheer greedy temptation and powerful foreign influences tend to favor. Romania also has an important strategic position as a front-line state against the USSR, which could win her favor with French strategists granting her economic concessions for the sake of stability and reliability. A smart regime there might leverage all of this into economic competitiveness, with France helping open the way to a place in the world markets.

If the world of the League of Nations/Weimar era muddles through into the second half of the century, I don't see any reason to expect much change in the relative positions of the Eastern nations to the Western, except perhaps for Czechoslovakia perhaps coming up toward Western European standards (and maybe only in the west of the country at that) while Romania has a chance to improve itself, but I would doubt they would realistically pull up to western European levels. Poland lacks Romania's oil but does enjoy some strategic attention and will probably enjoy a bit of economic favor for that reason, but hardly enough to jump-start an entire industrial economy.

Now compare that to OTL. On one hand, they all suffered a really horrible windshield-wiper war rolling first east then west through their lands, and two ruthless kleptocratic regimes successively commandeered everything in their war efforts, leaving the entire region devastated and depopulated. These were very bad things for the people there, and the fact that the Soviets wound up in complete domination was very nasty for them too.

But not, I think, from the cold-blooded point of view of industrial development per capita. The capitalist West hardly needed or wanted to raise up competitors against itself, but the Soviets, facing a Cold War against the highly developed and rapidly recovering western powers, needed to build up industrial capacity as fast as they could, and found the Eastern European lands and peoples more handy than the Soviet Union itself. Just as the USA assisted Japan and West Germany to rapidly recover to fill a pressing need for more material, so did the Russians desire and need extensive development in Eastern Europe. It also was in accordance with Bolshevik-Stalinist ideology that their rule should foster such development. And so I think that on the balance, the Soviet occupation and control fostered far more industrial development than free market capitalism would have favored there. It is quite true that the form of development was inflexible and inappropriate to competitiveness in the global markets once these nations were able to break free from Moscow's command. But then too, ongoing strategic competition against a still-threatening Russia meant that the newly liberated Eastern European economies found favor they would not have had the Cold War never happened.

Eastern Europe today is far better developed than would be reasonable to expect had there never been a Soviet period.
---------------------
Now the question of what would have happened if we assume Hitler's Reich was inevitable is another matter of course. But in that case, I don't see any plausible path for liberation and inclusion on favored terms by the western powers. Without Soviet power to offset Hitler, we are most likely looking at a Nazi Mitteleuropa, and very probable worse devastation in a later war using nukes, if the Reich is ever to be overthrown at all. Most of this thread seems to be taken up in wargaming that, and with the agency of the Eastern nations being left pretty much on the sidelines.

A nuclear crusade against the Reich in the later 40's or early 50s would involve the release of quite a lot of fallout, which alone might render the whole question of hoping for a non-Communist path of development quaint and macabre. Perhaps per capita it would be more industrialized--because some 50 percent or more of the people are dead, and the sole means of survival involves domed-over sealed greenhouses trying to raise crops with minimal fallout poisoning, causing Eastern Europe to look like some post-ecocatastrophe science fiction space colony. The few survivors are industrial because they live in buried salt and coal mines!

The notion that the Reich would be relatively easily defeated has become more popular on this board since the Sickle Cut TL that asserts that German victory over France was actually a near-run matter of luck and that France could easily, in retrospect, have stopped the Germans, and then they'd die back inevitably. Probably the latter is true, but how likely really is it that German conquest of France was a fluke?

Well, say it happens that France does stand and the Reich is pushed back, and Stalin is regarded as a Nazi ally for his invasion of Poland and seizure of the Baltics. I stopped reading Sickle Cut and don't know how it ended; the author was hell-bent on an anti-Soviet crusade when I last looked. Assuming that the Germans can't cut a deal and wind up being conquered systematically by Entente forces, does this spell any sort of better deal for the Eastern European peoples? Recalling that Hitler was well able to create puppet states that favored his cause in Slovakia, and found willing allies in Hungary, will the conquering Entente be particularly well disposed to the liberated eastern nations?

If a crusade against the Soviets is justified, it is because in the chaos Hitler caused, Stalin did move to take possession of various conquests. With the Reich collapsing, will he sue for peace? If he does, the old frontline states are just where they were before. Will Britain and France favor the sort of regional development that Stalin did, to build a stronger curtain of containment against the Soviet Union? I think they would be more likely to favor, as they did before the war, paternalist governments that purchase their industrial products, weapons systems especially, from Britain and France, and industrial development would be desultory and limited.
 
Note how this thread is consumed by the assumption that there must be a World War II against Germany.

See my earlier post. Without WW2 there is no Eastern Europe as we know it.

Instead we'd have Poland with 100 million citizens and a standard of living likely equal to Italy today, a Romania with a population and economy around about the size of our Spain, we have every Eastern European country being highly pluralistic, with millions of Germans, around 50 million Jews and dozens of other ethnicities living outside their own nation states in their millions.

And if Communism did become a ruling ideology in Eastern Europe absent the 2nd World War, it would be a form of Communism that we would not recognize in OTL and under circumstances that we would struggle to imagine. I really can't imagine the Stalinist bureaucratic socialism that we call "Communism" in our world could appeal in Europe enough to gain power without Europe being bombed, mashed and murdered back to third world status (as happened OTL). Heck, absent WW2, I can't see the Soviet Union continuing to follow the Stalinist system we're familiar with for long.

So no WW2, no Eastern Europe as we know it AND no Communism as we know it.

Why exactly should we expect development of Eastern European nations in a world that emerges slowly from the Depression of the 1930s but without a big war in Europe? Why should capital invest in Polish or Hungarian industry, when the developed nations of the West including Germany are still only partially recovered from their own slump? What markets would Polish industrialists, assuming they aren't overriden by foreign capital calling the tone, invest in specifically, that they aren't cut out of already by prior vested interests?

If capitalism did not develop Eastern Europe (and it wasn't doing a good job OTL) then Eastern European regimes would turn to planned capitalism (as they did OTL) to develop.

Combining central planning with capitalism has a fairly good record for developing national economies. (Witness Japan, Korea and Singapore.)

fasquardon
 
Per Angus Maddison in 1950:

Czechslovakia had a GDP/capita of 3501 USD, in 1989 it had one of 8768 USD, a growth of 2,49.
Hungary had a GDP/capita of 2480 USD in 1950 and 6903 USD in 1989, a growth of 2,78
Poland had a GDP/capita of 2447 USD in 1950 and 5683 in 1989, a growth of 2,32

Greece had a GDP/capita of 1915 USD (!) in 1950 and 10111 USD in 1989, a growth of 5,28
Portugal had a GDP/capita of 2086 USD in 1950 and 10371 USD in 1989, a growth of 4,97
Spain had a GDP/capita of 2189 USD in 1950 and 11528 USD in 1989, a growth of 5,29

Three socialist countries which where richer than three capitalist countries in 1950 where poorer in 1989 after 39 years of "socialist development". Most notably Czechslovakia which was leaps and bounds ahead of the others ended up being behind all three.

The conclusion from this is that to developed and semi-developed countries, socialism is useless.
 
upload_2017-2-3_0-50-31.png


Poland seriously underperformed in socialism!
 
Here is a useful chart to compare.

Even suffering the brunt of a full Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I believe Eastern Europe would have been better off today if Communism and the Cold War had been avoided.
Luckily, they have been catching up pretty fast over the past decades.
 

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