[reitanqild]

Actually, on average the rich countries that has diverged most from capitalism has been significantly worse.

I'm leaving out the developing countries on purpose here: they may have had it even worse but it doesn't feel fair to blame them.

Nazi Germany and Soviet/USSR (the whole time more or less) can't blame anyone else for the insane scale of human suffering that they created. Both are representatives of centrally planned economies where companies either don't exist in a western sense (Soviet), or only exist to serve the country (Germany).

[LtWorf]

Both nazi germany and soviet union were poor countries at the time.

[reitanqild]

Well, but I still don't want to put them in the same category as Congo or Bangladesh.

There are major differences.

[MandieD]

Nazi Germany became Nazi Germany in large part because of severe economic problems, but by the late 30s, living conditions for conforming, “good” Germans had improved somewhat.

[MandieD]

There was a reasonable supply of consumer goods for “good” Germans in the late 30s and early 40s after the economy started turning around, and food wasn’t a serious issue until very late in the war, and was worst in the years right after (again, for “good” Germans).

Weird little anecdote: my mother-in-law had her feet x-rayed in a shoe shop to check the fit of her new shoes circa 1943 in Essen. Absolutely no military benefit to ensuring that a 3 year old’s shoes fit, but definitely a market advantage for a shoe shop competing for sales (remember, we didn’t know that casual x-ray usage by non-radiologists was a terrible idea).

The big industrials were geared for military production, especially after 1939, but their owners often helped support the Nazis on their way to power, because they were more worried about Communists and Socialists, and either didn’t take the Nazis seriously, or figured the conservatives could get them under control… or actually agreed with them.

There’s a reason that the modern Social Democratic Party in Germany is the same organization that existed pre-NS era, but the Christian Democrats (conservatives) and Free Democrats (market liberals) were completely new post-war organizations.