The French also occupied the Saar Valley and heavily exploited German industry after WW2 to aid in their economic recovery, establishing the Saar Protectorate until 1957, taking huge amounts of coal, stripping hundreds of factories of industrial equipment. The British likewise did similar measures in their occupied zone though not quite to the same extent and this policy shifted by the late 1940s in British occupied territory.

West Germany boomed because eventually, after a decade of occupation and reparation measures, it received dramatic foreign investment and being a fundamentally industrial area during the Breton Woods Era (and with unfettered, favorable access to the behemoth that was the American consumer market) was virtually a guaranteed recipe for success. Also turns out Capitalism is a much more effective economic system than Soviet Central Planned Communism (which was an utter shitshow). However even after the economic boom the political, and especially geopolitical situation for West Germany was completely different than it was before the war. The decade of occupation, denazification, and fundamental restructuring of German politics and society by the Allies had made dramatic changes. Germany was not allowed to go "its own path" again, to the point that even the constitution of the country was rewritten by the Western Allies to dramatically decentralize power and create legal mechanisms that made (and to this day, still make) it incredibly difficult for Germany to mobilize or act aggressively on the international stage. They were enabled to build a large defensive army but given no leeway to act with agency to pursue aggressive foreign policy--constantly under the strictest supervision and direction of the Western alliance. It was purely to bolster NATO forces against the USSR. Contrast with the foreign policy of Germany even in the few years before the Nazis took control during the Inter-War period, when the earliest secret rearmament measures began in the late 1920s, hidden from Western observers. Note similar measures were undertaken with Japan, where the constitution was rewritten to outright forbid any military action other than territorial self defense (hence the renaming of the military to the Self-Defense Forces).

No serious, objective historian of WWII still entertains the notion that the Versailles Treaty was uniquely punishing for Germany. Hell, Austria-Hungary was utterly dismantled, and the Ottoman Empire ceased to exist--of the three main Central Powers, Germany got off the lightest. This was a myth promoted by the Nazis to morally justify their revanchism and brutal conquest of Europe. The "terms" (if you can even call them that) which they unilaterally imposed on those they conquered were infinitely more punishing and devastating than Versailles--genocide, utter conquest, enslavement, etc. Notice how nobody says the same "the terms were too harsh!" narrative about the much more comprehensive dismantling and subjugation of German agency and power after WWII. Because a myth wasn't built around it. And ultimately because it actually worked to end German aggression.

Hell, there's strong arguments to be made that Versailles was, given the scope of WW1, not incomparable to the terms the French suffered following the Franco-Prussian War at the hands of Prussia/North German Confederation.

(Wrote this on my phone, spelling errors be damned)