Strands #269 “Come Fly With...
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For more on marking an answer as the "Best Answer", please visit our FAQ.Germany for one, due to the enormous monetary reparations demanded by the Allies. This led to the German mark being worthless, and people needing a wheelbarrow full of banknotes just to buy a loaf of bread.
The economies and infrastructure of the Balkan counties were in tatters. The Allies said they'd send everything needed to repair things, but only at full market price with cash up front. What cash? One railway locomotive from UK would have cost about the same as Bulgaria's annual GNP! The Balkan countries were totally on their a***s. So Russia stepped in and supplied their needs at below cost, interest free, prices - practically giving the stuff away. Any wonder the Balkans leaned toward Russia and spurned the West for the next 50 years or so? But the West learned their lesson, and after WWII didn't make the same mistake. Instead, money was poured into a defeated Germany so as to rebuild a sound economy as quickly as possible. (Other Allied countries benefitted too, and it's been calculated that under the Marshall Plan, the US ended up providing the equivalent of US$1000 per person for the population of the whole of Allied Europe).