ujm, of course, especially early on, as modernity came there early and Jews were unprepared (nobody was). This discussion is specifically about a starting point with R Hirsh’s observant followers v. Eastern European Jews at the same time. One can say this is not a fair comparison – R Hirsh is dealing w/ a group after many non-observant people left, while Eastern European Jewry at that included everyone, including future Maskilim. Still, R Dessler’s position seem to be that he respects Frankfurt approach in producing observance, but not great Torah, while his anonymous opponent disagrees with the latter. Maybe R Dessler is under-counting relative success of EE Jewry given that he saw loss of their observance with his own eyes …
We can also see that post-war yeshivos did not replicate pre-war, or emulated R hirsh, moved to a third model of popular Torah learning rather than just focusing on raising gedolim, and had tremendous success along that path.