A few years ago, economic historian Albrecht Ritschl proposed the thesis that the socio-economic structures of the Federal Republic of Germany were more strongly influenced by path dependencies from the Third Reich than by the Federal Republic's regulatory policy. I subject this thesis to a critical review. From a functional perspective, I argue with regard to (1) the intensity of competition, (2) material prosperity and its distribution, and (3) producer and consumer sovereignty that the early Federal Republic was characterized much more by ties to regulatory traditions from the Weimar period than by path dependencies from the Third Reich.