But what many people are no longer aware of today is that predicting this devel-opment 70 years ago would have been a risky bet. To understand this better, let ustake a moment to look back at the country’s situation in 1949. After 12 years(1933–1945) of the totalitarian, criminal and aggressive Nazi dictatorship, Germanywas literally in ruins at the end of the Second World War. Not only had…