Didn’t the Soviets sort of cannibalize most of the german industry within the Soviet Occupation Area, prior to that area being turned into the DDR? Or was the relocation of eastern german industry a later thing?
Not sure I get what you mean. The Soviet industrial capacity already far surpassed the German industry even before the end of the war. This was why the Soviets won, not the Germans. The Germans already ran into severe supplying issues for their military equipment after 1942, the Soviets never really faced this problem as they had a solid industrial base that was already in full swing before the Nazi invasion, and rapidly expanded during the war.
They did however gain access to some high tech instruments (for example, German-built gyroscopes for V2 rockets which was far ahead of anything the Soviets had at the time), but much of the critical high tech military industries had been destroyed during the retreat to prevent them from falling into the Soviet hands. The entire leadership and high ranking scientists of the V2 rocket project, for example, surrendered to the Americans.
See @Mardoniush@hexbear.net comment above for a more precise description. The Soviets relocated / took some industrial plants partly as reparations and partly in case of allied invasion prior to the development of their own nuclear bomb.
Yeah, there was both immediate extraction of the industrial capacity of what was largely already a poorer area (both as reparations and because they weren’t sure the allies would stop at the Elbe), and then afterwards the DDR sent a lot of resources to the USSR as well (because the USSR required massive military resources for collective defence that could compete with the west). One of the reasons it didn’t quite keep up with the GDR’s development (the other was that the USA absolutely poured resources into West Germany to make it an anti-communist showpiece.)
But actually the Soviets ended up putting quite a few factories back after the war. The famine of 1946 affected Germany even harder than the USSR and the occupation government realised that they needed to rebuild the economy for the long haul and that the eastern bloc could take advantage of a relatively highly educated populace
Didn’t the Soviets sort of cannibalize most of the german industry within the Soviet Occupation Area, prior to that area being turned into the DDR? Or was the relocation of eastern german industry a later thing?
Eastern German industry was:
Concentrated in Saxony, Thüringen and Berlin, and mostly composed of ore mining.
Not untouched by WW2.
Subject to Capital flight in the earliest years of existence from frightened capitalists relocating to the west
Not sure I get what you mean. The Soviet industrial capacity already far surpassed the German industry even before the end of the war. This was why the Soviets won, not the Germans. The Germans already ran into severe supplying issues for their military equipment after 1942, the Soviets never really faced this problem as they had a solid industrial base that was already in full swing before the Nazi invasion, and rapidly expanded during the war.
They did however gain access to some high tech instruments (for example, German-built gyroscopes for V2 rockets which was far ahead of anything the Soviets had at the time), but much of the critical high tech military industries had been destroyed during the retreat to prevent them from falling into the Soviet hands. The entire leadership and high ranking scientists of the V2 rocket project, for example, surrendered to the Americans.
See @Mardoniush@hexbear.net comment above for a more precise description. The Soviets relocated / took some industrial plants partly as reparations and partly in case of allied invasion prior to the development of their own nuclear bomb.
Yeah, there was both immediate extraction of the industrial capacity of what was largely already a poorer area (both as reparations and because they weren’t sure the allies would stop at the Elbe), and then afterwards the DDR sent a lot of resources to the USSR as well (because the USSR required massive military resources for collective defence that could compete with the west). One of the reasons it didn’t quite keep up with the GDR’s development (the other was that the USA absolutely poured resources into West Germany to make it an anti-communist showpiece.)
But actually the Soviets ended up putting quite a few factories back after the war. The famine of 1946 affected Germany even harder than the USSR and the occupation government realised that they needed to rebuild the economy for the long haul and that the eastern bloc could take advantage of a relatively highly educated populace