ABSTRACT
Why begin a book about the reconstruction of western Europe in 1947? Because the political and economic events of that year are decisive for interpreting the past and understanding what was to come. The year of Marshall Aid, of what has been interpreted as a profound economic, political and spiritual crisis in Europe, the year when both economic recovery and reconstruction seemed to have foundered in the failure to produce a peace treaty with Germany and the inability of western European economies to function any longer without American aid, the year when Europe was divided; few years in history have been so often singled out as a political and economic turning-point. That it was a year of extraordinarily dramatic political events can readily be agreed. But it is the first contention of this book that the economic events of 1947 have usually been seriously misinterpreted and as a consequence so have the years before and after. The purpose, therefore, of beginning with an analysis of the economic crisis of 1947 is to explain the nature of European recovery and reconstruction since 1945 as well as in the years after 1947.
