The economic gap between Germany and Italy: an analysis from post-WWII

How can it be that two countries, that restart from a very similar devestating situation, end up with one being the most powerful European country and the other one with losing ground? This is the case of Germany and Italy, two amongst the most influential nations in the world, that had to cope with destroyed societies and economies after the Second World War and eventually went through different paths. The objective of this analysis is to understand, according to the macroeconomics point of view, what happened and which might have been the causes of the present gap, with the aim of encouraging towards a new competition.