ABSTRACT
The aspect of the economic reconstruction of Europe to which most energy and attention has been given and the one which still seems to awaken the most interest is that of the impact of the ERP on European economic and political life. To what extent is modern Western Europe the creation of the Marshall Plan? Could it have been otherwise? These are questions repeatedly mulled over in conferences and newspapers. At the height of the Cold War American scholars sought to demonstrate that the Marshall Plan was the cause of Western Europe’s remarkable economic performance and that it had ‘saved’ western Europe for democracy.1 International economists in the United States, whose subject the Marshall Plan had made important to American government policies, wrote more guardedly in much the same vein.2
