Brits victories of ww2 were short lived, some guy did over 600 interviews of WW2 vets in the 2000's and almost all of them except the ones that struck it rich after WW2, said they would rather be speaking German.
Sure, but that's basically both countries resuming the trajectories they had already been on before the war: Germany an ascending economic powerhouse and Britain an empire in decline.
And it must be noted that in the immediate aftermath of WW2, West Germany got off disproportionately cheap while East Germany shouldered a disproportionate amount of the burden. I doubt that these British veterans would have preferred life in the socialist GDR over their life in the UK. After the reunification in 1990, the West inherited the run down East and had to pump ungodly amounts of money their way to get them back on track again. During the 90s and early 00s, while the US, the UK and the rest of Europe were in an economic boom, Germany was bogged down in economic malaise, with persistently high unemployment rates and low growth.
As weird as it might sound, it imho took until roughly 2005 before we were able to arrive at a final verdict on the economic aftermath of WW2.