David Sichinava

“The day Hitler died, 10 percent of German railways were operational and the country was at a literal standstill. A year later, in June 1946, 93 percent of all German rail tracks had been re-opened and 800 bridges had been rebuilt. In May 1945 German coal production was barely one-tenth that of 1939; a year later it had quintupled in output. In April 1945 it seemed to Saul K. Padover, an observer with the advancing US Army in western Germany, that it would surely take the flattened city of Aachen 20 years to rebuild. But within a few weeks he was already recording the re-opening of the city’s tyre and textile factories and the beginnings of economic life.”
― Anonymous