ABSTRACT
Life in postwar Europe begins for the average historian with the Marshall Plan. He hurries past the first two postwar years as if nothing much happened and fastens on the more dramatic episode that followed. Europe is seen as rescued from the verge of catastrophe by American generosity and steered in the direction of the Common Market (now promised at last). Was it really like that? Was it indeed the Marshall Plan that turned the postwar years into a Golden Age in which all Europe moved forward together, free from any major depression for thirty years and from war for longer than ever before? Do we owe it to the Marshall Plan that things turned out so much better after the Second World War than after the First?
