the destructive economic impact of the war against Hitler was by no means as total as they had first thought, even in Germany itself. The bombing campaign, for all its human costs, had wrought less economic damage than its advocates expected. Little more than 20 percent of German industrial plant had been destroyed by May 1945; even in the Ruhr, where much Allied bombing had been concentrated, two thirds of all plant and machinery had survived intact. Elsewhere, in the Czech lands for example, industry and agriculture thrived under the German occupation and emerged virtually
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