To some extent I think the social structures produced by inherited wealth are anti-conduicive to innovation. Where's the innovation in the US? Most would say it's concentrated out west, in a state that didn't exist until 1850. The social structures of concentrated wealth in the South from the slavery era make it less innovative. And the northeast centers on money-making-money and property ownership.

The real sweet spot, of course, is cashing out: finding how to get the old money and oil money to invest in your new innovation. The success of WeWork, for example.

I wouldn't say that Spain was "razed to the ground" compared to Germany.

- taught a huge number of people enough electronics to do field maintenance of radio and radar

- had a further more theoretical education for radar operators

- at the end of the war, sold off a huge amount of kit cheaply; some of this is still kicking around the ham community in California. See e.g. https://mightyohm.com/wiki/resources:surplus and the geographic distribution

The US picked up a lot of refugees (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Martians_(scientists) , Intel founder Andy Grove etc).

There's all sorts of odd little path dependencies. Shockley and Fairchild semiconductors were in California because Shockley himself wanted to live near his mother and managed to recruit people to move across the country.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parable_of_the_broken_window

for instance: Belarus lost a quarter of it's population many villages and cities where utterly destroyed. also, don't forget world war 1 (and the other conflicts sparked after, like Russian civil war, breakup of Austria Hungary, Greco Turkish war etc) was only 25 years prior..