ABSTRACT
Today experts are agreed that the shape of the postwar economic order in Western Europe was discernible from 1949 onwards. It was the year when the fruits of continued high investment and of expanding production became visible at last to the long-suffering populations of the Old World. The American reporter Howard Smith described how from the autumn of 1948,
… continuing transfusions of American goods plus the first good harvest since the war brought material improvement and a perceptible return of color to the collective patient's cheeks …. Britain felt able to relax austerity just enough to devote some labor to replanting her public squares; gray residential London became speckled with bright, freshly painted front doors. 1
