The Wall was built in 1961 to stem the tide of defections to the more prosperous West, which was draining East Germany of skilled labor. If the Wall was never built, the defections would have continued and East Germany's economy would have been weaker. The only way the DDR was going to spread into the West was a war; there was no chance of it spreading into the West. By 1961, the "economic miracle" had returned West Germany to a relatively prosperous state of affairs while East Germany's economy was still sputtering along like a Trabant with a bad valve.