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.
Bookmarks