[VieElm]

The Marshall plan was preceded by the Morgenthau plan which would have destroyed Germany's ability to ever create war again, reducing Germany to subsistence level farming. The Allied occupiers actually began destroying the German infrastructure, but it didn't work out however as Europe's economy had historically depended on Germany's industrial base and America and Western Europe needed to counter growing Soviet power in the first beginnings of the cold war.

It other words it had nothing to do with "deserved", Germany was rebuilt out of strategic necessity to face two looming threats to international stability and peace.

[chm]

I'm currently playing my first game of Diplomacy. Anyone with the slightest interest in world politics should play it once. It's teaching me more about how the world works than 2 years of reading The Economist (sadly canceled due to lack of time).

I now associate a feeling and experience to the words "strategic necessity".