Poland, Czechia and Slovakia were fighting tooth and nail to not be in Eastern Europe... meanwhile the EE virus has spread and now Sweden, Norway and Finland are engulfed too!
Finland is factually not Eastern European though there’s a wide consensus that culturally they are Northern and therefore belong to the Nordic Council.
If your criteria is purely geographical then one can’t ignore that Northern Norway goes further east than any point in Finland and Stockholm is in nearly the same longitude as parts of Serbia.
I was talking about "Scandinavia doing the heavy lifting". I understand that you have a hate-boner for Poland and a regular boner for Germany, but don't worry. In the not so distant future Poland will catch Germany's GDP per capita as well, while the mighty new Germans Mohammad and Abdul are going to hinder German progress.
I'm not a Pole but I personally dislike Germany. They have fu**ed Europe over multiple times in the past 100 years and continue to do so while presenting "muh net EU contributor" numbers for the gullible idiots who actually think that the EU is a net negative for Germany lmao.
If having two eyes and a brain + some ability to connect the dots makes me a racist then yeah I'm a racist.
I can also play this game: I assume you're a single, childless man in his late 20s or early to mid 30s with a higher than average BMI? What's the point?
Well, surely some of my fellow country man will break into my house and beat me with a baseball bat for saying it, but what is and is not Eastern Europe was basically decided by the Iron Curtain. We may not like it, but it is what it is.
Yes, Austria wasn’t, but Yugoslavia? They may have enjoyed some privileges the rest of Eastern Europe didn’t have, but they were definitely behind the Iron Curtain—at the very least geographically. They still had some small level of Soviet oversight; why do you think it was one of few places where you could enjoy a vacation at the sea under the Iron Curtain?
No one sane today is thinking about the Cold War. And it's starting to get strange when, almost in 2026, there are still people who want to discuss geography through an artificial and long-dead political divide. Central Europe is alive, just like Northern and Southern Europe.
The 'Cold War' isn't a trauma for modern children; why force something on them they don't know until they look in history books?
Why should countries be perceived through the political ambitions of the Soviet Union?
And I can ask many such questions, and in the end, only one guy will be left who will answer everything: that after all, those countries were communist. Curtain call. And France was a colonial power, let's continue punishing it for slavery.
Eastern Europe was shaped not only by the Cold War but also by a shared history of hardship.Also by its distinct ethnicity, culture, and language all of this sets it apart from the West
Of course. Polonization, internal colonization in Ukraine, wars, Cossack rebellions, wars, wars with Turkey, wars with Russia, and in between, some more interesting things and influences, but ultimately, they became the cause of the country's downfall. A wonderful story. You know, it's worse for you that you've encountered someone who simply regrets that the southern nobility came up with the idea of expanding eastward.
And if you want to mention Russia, that's the last time they murdered Poles in the forests before they imposed communism on Poland for 45 years. And I guarantee you, don't go any further on that topic.
ethnicity, culture, and language.
What 'culture' are you talking about? Polish or Czech cultures is a heritage of Western Christianity. It has nothing to do with eastern cultures like Russian, Ukrainian or Bulgarian. For a fu***g thousand years.
The entire CEE+Balkan region is made up of several language groups, including three Slavic language groups. This means that when I'm a Polish person, I don't understand of what Russians, Serbs or Ukrainians say, except for some random words.
I don't know what you mean about ethnicity. If you think it's all one ethnic or cultural blob, it's time to go back to learning from books instead of spouting nonsense about the Cold War.
What the f**k is wrong with you people? Do you think everyone in your imaginary 'Cold War' world is a thousand-faced Russian or what? Shove the Cold War deep up your ass and don't bother others with this shit.
Yugoslavia was a block-free socialist state as they rejected Soviet influence and being part of the Warsaw pact since 1948. Travel, like you said, was possible as well as trade with central and western european countries.
In fact the Iron Curtain of Yugoslavia was at the borders to Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, regardless that they were also socialist.
While true, the USSR retained influence through diplomatic channels, and Yugoslavia, while keeping trade with the West, still suffered from the same things the rest of Eastern Europe did: suppression of the opposition, suppression of free media, and controlled political processes. They were pretty far from the freedoms and liberties the West enjoyed. (So I think we can settle on the fact that Yugoslavia wasn’t part of the West, but wasn’t exactly part of the East either.)
And what do we do? Believe the populist right that our economy goes to shit because of the immigrants largely keeping our trade and construction businesses alive at this point....
Nice map though, cooldthat you found such s good fit for the GDP
Well some of these countries have a population of 3-4 mln people, while Germany has 83 mln, some of them were literally destroyed by Germany and then enjoyed communism while at least half of Germany enjoyed Marshall plan and CECA. So that's not surprising.
the whole Marshall plan was not that important for Germanys development. In todays worth it included investments of less then 20 billion dollar . That´s not low and had its influence but not a deciding number for big economies like Germany used to be it in late 1940s.
In todays worth it´s like every citizen getting 250 dollar. Nice to have but not deciding over the success of an economy at all.
were literally destroyed by Germany and then enjoyed communism while (..) Germany
Do you not remember what you wrote? Youre insinuating that Germany wasn't even more destroyed after the war than Eastern Europe.
Oh and the idea that the Marshall plan had any lasting effect on the German economy has been widely disproven by every economist already. Again, what the hell do they teach you in school?
No right? If you take any map you can literally still see the different between east Germany and west Germany. Same with the two sides of the iron curtain, but hey, Marshall, CECA and free trade definitely has no role in that. Again, I would rather question what they teach _you_? Germany has a prosperous economy just because they are the chosen ones or maybe maybe because being on lucky side of the iron curstain have a big impact? I really don't know.
biggest reasons for economic differences between west vs east Germany:
western Germany was already quite industrialized while east Germany was hardly de-industrialized by the USSR.
also western Germany had capitalism and free market while east Germany had a bad system of communism.
My father and his parents lived in both of Germanys and they would tell you in west Germany was literally more worked with higher productivity which lead to higher wealth after 40 years of separated countries. It was not gifted. It had to be earned.
Yes compared to countries more east, west Germany had luck to be in NATO and without communism. And so had the precondition to be successfull.
But for example UK had even better preconditions after war but rather fucked around with their already dead empire and missed the chance to modernize their economy while Germany made some right decisions towards a modern economy.
So in conclusion: west Germany had the luck to be in the free world, they made good decisions and built up their economy more modern after it was destroyed, productivity was higher than in communist countries. Free trade was important for Germany because west Germany focused a lot on export of industrial goods. Marshall plan had a minor effect. only like 20 billion dollar of todays worth. thats little to nothing compared to Germanys finances and costs.
The difference between East Germany and West Germany is due to the difference between capitalism and communism, not because of the Marshall plan. West Germany was also always more industrialised than the east even before the war.
East Germany was by far the richest country of the entire eastern bloc. So even without ANY help whatsoever and the same conditions as all other Eastern European countries, East Germany still was significantly ahead economically.
Honestly, read a history book before commenting your garbage.
West Germany got by far the least amount of Marshall plan money of all Western countries. And all East Germany got was Soviets destructing entire East German factories and rebuilding them in Poland and the Soviet Union.
The reason Germany is significantly richer than all of Eastern Europe is because of 19th century industrialisation, not because of the 20th century.
Soviets dismantled entire factories in post-German territories and Poland - german and polish. For years raw materials what Poland produced (including coal) were shipped by trains to the Soviet Union. Machinery was dismantled, products and tools were confiscated on a massive scale.
Poland was a country dependent, robbed and economically exploited.
and Germany is almost thrice as big as all Nordic countries combined. East Germany for example significantly pulls Germany's average down, while regions like Bavaria with 13 million people are arguably richer than any Scandinavian region.
Yupp, but why are Nordic countries & eastern european countries lumped together? We've really got nothing to do w eachother.
I feel this post is pointless & misleading at best.
Austria isnt Eastern Europe. Anyway, Germany has made other countries extremely dependent, which is ecologically absurd. Similar to what Russia did with Ukraine.
Germany totally had no economy prior to 1933. The Ruhr Valley totally didn’t outpace the entire rest of the continent in coal and steel production prior to WW1 and Germany totally did not become an industrial juggernaut long before they lost and (apparently) still somehow won WW2…
Is Germany rising, I understood it was in recession? Belarus is of course hopeless, but most of others are in growth, so the equality may not last long
For Germany, a very small GDP increase of around 0.2% is expected for 2025. Not exactly a recession, but the German economy has certainly lost momentum. Stagnation is perhaps the correct term.
German salaries are just as high as Swedens and higher than Finlands, while having a lower cost of living. It's only Norway and Denmark that have slightly higher salaries, although it really depends on your field.
they are not much worse to nordic countries but this map explains it pretty much why they are not that high. Cheap workers from eastern Europe keep the salaries quite low. Also a system of pension and health insurance that makes up in reality like 50% of many salaries.
Thats not really that bad when we look per capita. 80mil vs 160mil. That would mean that east is "only" half as rich as the Germany and keep in mimd that Ukraine is in open conflict have tone of people and earns like central African country. Austria and Poland do heavy lifting here but they are not even the best per capita.
For a normal country it is essentially true. Switzerland and Lichtenstein are economic havens for the rich and Norway had luck with their oil. There will always be exceptions to the rule
Famously Eastern European Countries of Fennoscandia
Poland, Czechia and Slovakia were fighting tooth and nail to not be in Eastern Europe... meanwhile the EE virus has spread and now Sweden, Norway and Finland are engulfed too!
In which Europe is Finland supposed to be in terms of horizontal division if not in Eastern Europe?
None. It’s Western Japan.
OK, I understand. Finland has the same opinion about being in Eastern Europe as Poland or Czechia.
Finland is factually not Eastern European though there’s a wide consensus that culturally they are Northern and therefore belong to the Nordic Council.
If your criteria is purely geographical then one can’t ignore that Northern Norway goes further east than any point in Finland and Stockholm is in nearly the same longitude as parts of Serbia.
making arbitrary cultural divisions like "eastern europe" "northern europe" "western europe" isn't really useful
It's basically the same as with Poland and Czechia and Central Europe.
As it says on the map itself, eastern and northern. We can take a guess which one Finland is part of.
North-Eastern Europe?
No way! Even Kosovo? What if you counted San Marino?
How do the population numbers compare?
Around 83 million for Germany vs ~130 million for the other countries
About 160 million actually
The red countries are doing pretty well then, though Austria and Poland do the heavy lifting tbh
Unfortunately Romanians are 4 times poorer not 2 times poorer than Germans
Isn’t Romania and Poland the main economic growth of EU?
Yep, but it's like filling an empty box, it's easier than a full one
lol, its Scandinavia thats doing the heavy lifting. Poland is significantly poorer than Germany.
Not by much Poland has a gdp 1.04 Trillion while Scandinavia has 1.4 trillion
Polands gdp per capita is 28k$ Lowest in nordics is 54k$ (same as germany) so its literally half of the wrost in the nordics
It's gdp in total comparison, not per capita
I know but were pulling our weight. Poland is huge but still under performing comparatively
It cannot underperform on a map where it's a biggest economy, 1/4 of the red countries combined
It's not 2004 buddy.
Poland has half the GDP per capita of Germany. Poland is significantly poorer than Germany in 2025, "buddy".
I was talking about "Scandinavia doing the heavy lifting". I understand that you have a hate-boner for Poland and a regular boner for Germany, but don't worry. In the not so distant future Poland will catch Germany's GDP per capita as well, while the mighty new Germans Mohammad and Abdul are going to hinder German progress.
I'm not a Pole but I personally dislike Germany. They have fu**ed Europe over multiple times in the past 100 years and continue to do so while presenting "muh net EU contributor" numbers for the gullible idiots who actually think that the EU is a net negative for Germany lmao.
Ah nice, youre an openly proud racist. How quaint.
If having two eyes and a brain + some ability to connect the dots makes me a racist then yeah I'm a racist.
I can also play this game: I assume you're a single, childless man in his late 20s or early to mid 30s with a higher than average BMI? What's the point?
they even downvote you for static objective facts, a classic.
When I look at my comment views, it’s mostly from Poland lol
More than 1/5 comes from Polish GDP, I would say that's quite a lot.
Ahh yeah, but I was talking strictly in terms of GDP, I though Poland's huge population would compensate
Also why the downvote? Can one really only have correct opinions
There are 22 countries marked red on the map. Not 17.
Aktshually, I live in 1950's and there are only 10 countries
Bro probably forgot his glasses 🤓 ☝️
I think there are 11, unless someone got annexed when I wasn't looking.
Unexpected second Anschluss
Some countries are richer than others. More news at twelve
Also, eastern Europe has made a lot of progress if you compare this to 1994
17 countries in the description but 22 highlighted in the map
Eastern Europe includes now also Austria, Czechia, Slovakia and the Balkans
There is too much off
Well, surely some of my fellow country man will break into my house and beat me with a baseball bat for saying it, but what is and is not Eastern Europe was basically decided by the Iron Curtain. We may not like it, but it is what it is.
Even with that argument in mind: Austria and Jugoslavia were not behind the Iron Curtain and thus not considered Eastern Europe.
Yes, Austria wasn’t, but Yugoslavia? They may have enjoyed some privileges the rest of Eastern Europe didn’t have, but they were definitely behind the Iron Curtain—at the very least geographically. They still had some small level of Soviet oversight; why do you think it was one of few places where you could enjoy a vacation at the sea under the Iron Curtain?
No one sane today is thinking about the Cold War. And it's starting to get strange when, almost in 2026, there are still people who want to discuss geography through an artificial and long-dead political divide. Central Europe is alive, just like Northern and Southern Europe.
The 'Cold War' isn't a trauma for modern children; why force something on them they don't know until they look in history books?
Why should countries be perceived through the political ambitions of the Soviet Union?
And I can ask many such questions, and in the end, only one guy will be left who will answer everything: that after all, those countries were communist. Curtain call. And France was a colonial power, let's continue punishing it for slavery.
Eastern Europe was shaped not only by the Cold War but also by a shared history of hardship.Also by its distinct ethnicity, culture, and language all of this sets it apart from the West
Of course. Polonization, internal colonization in Ukraine, wars, Cossack rebellions, wars, wars with Turkey, wars with Russia, and in between, some more interesting things and influences, but ultimately, they became the cause of the country's downfall. A wonderful story. You know, it's worse for you that you've encountered someone who simply regrets that the southern nobility came up with the idea of expanding eastward.
And if you want to mention Russia, that's the last time they murdered Poles in the forests before they imposed communism on Poland for 45 years. And I guarantee you, don't go any further on that topic.
What 'culture' are you talking about? Polish or Czech cultures is a heritage of Western Christianity. It has nothing to do with eastern cultures like Russian, Ukrainian or Bulgarian. For a fu***g thousand years.
The entire CEE+Balkan region is made up of several language groups, including three Slavic language groups. This means that when I'm a Polish person, I don't understand of what Russians, Serbs or Ukrainians say, except for some random words.
I don't know what you mean about ethnicity. If you think it's all one ethnic or cultural blob, it's time to go back to learning from books instead of spouting nonsense about the Cold War.
What the f**k is wrong with you people? Do you think everyone in your imaginary 'Cold War' world is a thousand-faced Russian or what? Shove the Cold War deep up your ass and don't bother others with this shit.
Yugoslavia was a block-free socialist state as they rejected Soviet influence and being part of the Warsaw pact since 1948. Travel, like you said, was possible as well as trade with central and western european countries. In fact the Iron Curtain of Yugoslavia was at the borders to Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria, regardless that they were also socialist.
While true, the USSR retained influence through diplomatic channels, and Yugoslavia, while keeping trade with the West, still suffered from the same things the rest of Eastern Europe did: suppression of the opposition, suppression of free media, and controlled political processes. They were pretty far from the freedoms and liberties the West enjoyed. (So I think we can settle on the fact that Yugoslavia wasn’t part of the West, but wasn’t exactly part of the East either.)
Yes, that's true
That applies to Greece, Spain and Portugal for a good chunk of the Cold War as well.
And over half of that will make 4 countries Poland+ Nordics.
So Ukraine and russia are not eastern europe?
But Norway is?
Wow, incredible. Some countries have a greater GDP than others. Very educational
Only Belarus is East European out of the marked countries
And what do we do? Believe the populist right that our economy goes to shit because of the immigrants largely keeping our trade and construction businesses alive at this point....
Nice map though, cooldthat you found such s good fit for the GDP
Germany has a fuck ton of people. Norway is the richest country per citizen.
The red countries combined have more people
Almost twice as much (160 mil)
no, the richest country per capita would be Switzerland.
Well some of these countries have a population of 3-4 mln people, while Germany has 83 mln, some of them were literally destroyed by Germany and then enjoyed communism while at least half of Germany enjoyed Marshall plan and CECA. So that's not surprising.
lol, you think Germany wasn't destroyed in WW2? What did they teach you in school?
Are you functional illiterate?
the whole Marshall plan was not that important for Germanys development. In todays worth it included investments of less then 20 billion dollar . That´s not low and had its influence but not a deciding number for big economies like Germany used to be it in late 1940s.
In todays worth it´s like every citizen getting 250 dollar. Nice to have but not deciding over the success of an economy at all.
Do you not remember what you wrote? Youre insinuating that Germany wasn't even more destroyed after the war than Eastern Europe.
Oh and the idea that the Marshall plan had any lasting effect on the German economy has been widely disproven by every economist already. Again, what the hell do they teach you in school?
No right? If you take any map you can literally still see the different between east Germany and west Germany. Same with the two sides of the iron curtain, but hey, Marshall, CECA and free trade definitely has no role in that. Again, I would rather question what they teach _you_? Germany has a prosperous economy just because they are the chosen ones or maybe maybe because being on lucky side of the iron curstain have a big impact? I really don't know.
biggest reasons for economic differences between west vs east Germany:
western Germany was already quite industrialized while east Germany was hardly de-industrialized by the USSR.
also western Germany had capitalism and free market while east Germany had a bad system of communism.
My father and his parents lived in both of Germanys and they would tell you in west Germany was literally more worked with higher productivity which lead to higher wealth after 40 years of separated countries. It was not gifted. It had to be earned.
Yes compared to countries more east, west Germany had luck to be in NATO and without communism. And so had the precondition to be successfull.
But for example UK had even better preconditions after war but rather fucked around with their already dead empire and missed the chance to modernize their economy while Germany made some right decisions towards a modern economy.
So in conclusion: west Germany had the luck to be in the free world, they made good decisions and built up their economy more modern after it was destroyed, productivity was higher than in communist countries. Free trade was important for Germany because west Germany focused a lot on export of industrial goods. Marshall plan had a minor effect. only like 20 billion dollar of todays worth. thats little to nothing compared to Germanys finances and costs.
The difference between East Germany and West Germany is due to the difference between capitalism and communism, not because of the Marshall plan. West Germany was also always more industrialised than the east even before the war.
East Germany was by far the richest country of the entire eastern bloc. So even without ANY help whatsoever and the same conditions as all other Eastern European countries, East Germany still was significantly ahead economically.
Honestly, read a history book before commenting your garbage.
Yes Germany was destroyed but they got significantly more help than Eastern Europe
West Germany got by far the least amount of Marshall plan money of all Western countries. And all East Germany got was Soviets destructing entire East German factories and rebuilding them in Poland and the Soviet Union.
The reason Germany is significantly richer than all of Eastern Europe is because of 19th century industrialisation, not because of the 20th century.
What were they rebuilding?
Soviets dismantled entire factories in post-German territories and Poland - german and polish. For years raw materials what Poland produced (including coal) were shipped by trains to the Soviet Union. Machinery was dismantled, products and tools were confiscated on a massive scale.
Poland was a country dependent, robbed and economically exploited.
Weird comparison... Nordic countries have roughly the same gdp per capita as Germany (Norway &Denmark acc have substantially higher)
and Germany is almost thrice as big as all Nordic countries combined. East Germany for example significantly pulls Germany's average down, while regions like Bavaria with 13 million people are arguably richer than any Scandinavian region.
Yupp, but why are Nordic countries & eastern european countries lumped together? We've really got nothing to do w eachother. I feel this post is pointless & misleading at best.
Locomotive 🚂 👍
Germany's GDP wawDPDP way bigger than EEasterern Europe's, no contest
Four dollars six hundred and fifty-eight tons.
Nordics are now eastern xd
For a moment I thought it was circlejerk
Living in Denmark it pleases me to see Sweden as Eastern Europe
NGL I expected more countries were needed to rival Germany's economy, like maybe Ukraine/Greece, and Denmark
However, as a German I would like to add that we are a Banana-Republic.
Austria isnt Eastern Europe. Anyway, Germany has made other countries extremely dependent, which is ecologically absurd. Similar to what Russia did with Ukraine.
Germany vs Central European Countries ;0
But for Germans anything pass thy eastern borders is terrain for exploitation.
Calling Scandinavians eastern Europe sure is something
Germoney rocks as usual. This is the reason why Balkan people download duolingo to learn German.
They built their economy on slave labor and theft.
Germany totally had no economy prior to 1933. The Ruhr Valley totally didn’t outpace the entire rest of the continent in coal and steel production prior to WW1 and Germany totally did not become an industrial juggernaut long before they lost and (apparently) still somehow won WW2…
Germany its europe's last hope
Gdp is a poor measure of economic output, especially when you have cash in an economy
And smaller populations will have less gdp but some have more gdp/capita
Its a poor measure if used as a proxy for a lot of things, but it portrays economic output as faithfully as realistically possible.
Which side is rising, which side falling?
Both sides are rising, but so called "Eastern Europe" (more like Central and Balkans) are rising faster.
Is Germany rising, I understood it was in recession? Belarus is of course hopeless, but most of others are in growth, so the equality may not last long
For Germany, a very small GDP increase of around 0.2% is expected for 2025. Not exactly a recession, but the German economy has certainly lost momentum. Stagnation is perhaps the correct term.
How come German salaries aint great compared to nordic countries?
Too many people I guess, China have larger gdp than Germany but smaller salaries for instance
German salaries are just as high as Swedens and higher than Finlands, while having a lower cost of living. It's only Norway and Denmark that have slightly higher salaries, although it really depends on your field.
I think only Norway has higher salaries than Germany, atleast that's what the stats say
they are not much worse to nordic countries but this map explains it pretty much why they are not that high. Cheap workers from eastern Europe keep the salaries quite low. Also a system of pension and health insurance that makes up in reality like 50% of many salaries.
Looks alot like the 2 world wars.
Wanna buy my shit sandwich? $100
I’ll buy it back off you tomorrow at the same price.
We’ll help raise our GDP by $200
Thats not really that bad when we look per capita. 80mil vs 160mil. That would mean that east is "only" half as rich as the Germany and keep in mimd that Ukraine is in open conflict have tone of people and earns like central African country. Austria and Poland do heavy lifting here but they are not even the best per capita.
Ukraine isnt even highlighted in red here.
Cause this map is not about the same data it is "based" oryginal one included Ukraine and had much less countries.
Lower GDP is better. Higher GDP means more slavery, lower GDP means freedom
Welcome to the slave republics of Liechtenstein, Switzerland and Norway!
For a normal country it is essentially true. Switzerland and Lichtenstein are economic havens for the rich and Norway had luck with their oil. There will always be exceptions to the rule
I see. I'm from a normal country (Germany) but I'm not chained to my desk and serfdom was abolished here 200 years ago.
I did not realize you took it literally , I guess that ends the discussion