Originally Posted by
Slant
The GDR, however, did not fare so well. They basically copied every of our moves but due to some peculiarities never achieved our efficiency. Socialism didn't encourage entrepeneurship nor hard labour. You get paid the same amount as the laziest guy in your factory, no matter how hard you put your back into it. It's just a small scale example, but this is part of a problem that continued all the way up in business. And obliterated cities or even carrying all the old machinery off to the Soviet Union did not help them at all. It had zero effect after they rebuild shit like West Germany did.
By the way, the Soviets didn't have any reparations by East Germany as far as I know. So there goes your reparation being dropped argument.