I always read the news and I saw a note about some British guy who said that England was not a recipient of aid from the Marshall Plan, this was rapidly debunked and it turns out the UK was the largest recipient of this aid.
But that is not what made me wonder, what makes me wonder is how the Soviet Union was able to get ahead despite that it and what would become its satellites were some of the nations most devastated during World War II and none of them accepted aid from the Marshall Plan; something makes me think this just doesn't tick, I mean Germany and most other European countries are thought to have been able to overcome the war destruction thanks to this aid, it helped them move on to again become some of the richest countries in the world despite having come out of the war in ruins.
Yet the Soviet Union under a system that has been widely derided as useless and a clear way to poverty was able not only to overcome the destruction brought on it by the war but also to evolve into one of the two world superpowers, how can this have happened? Either the political system was not as lousy as we thought it was or we aren't being told the whole story.
I have always found it kind of fishy that the USA was able to round up all the German scientists it needed to build its nuclear program, and yet enough were left behind to make it possible for the Soviet Union to also develop its own nuclear power.