Quote Originally Posted by Firn View Post
While I don't know much about the East german economy one must add that it contained the German regions hit hardest by plans to deindustrialize Germany. The Soviets were certainly eager to shift as much East as possible for a long timeframe and they were very efficient in taking down whole industries, considerably less so in rebuilding them in the Union.
That's what I meant with "reparations to USSR".

A factory is really not a set of machines and tools, but of people who know how to use them.
The East Germans retained (most of) the people, the Soviets took the hardware. Hardware can be replaced much more easily (and new hardware is usually better than old one).

German WW2 efforts to build new factories from scratch tended to be inefficient and plagued by long delays if the factory was 100% new, but they were successful if the new factory was leaning on an established on at the same site. The hardware was the same in both methods.