ABSTRACT
Taking stock in summer 1949 of America’s attempt to reconstruct Western Europe it can only be judged at that stage as a near-complete failure. The bold policy of the Marshall Plan had succeeded only in confirming and strengthening the western Europe of independent, competitive nation states which had emerged from the war. It had added to them another one, the German Federal Republic, whose future relationships to Western Europe were obscure and even menacing. The Western European international framework into which West Germany was to be integrated was tenuous and inadequate – a military alliance from which Germany was excluded, a vague and powerless Council of Europe, and the OEEC, which not only made evident the independence and lack of co-operation of the nation states but might endure no longer than Marshall Aid. Faced with the problem of disembarrassing itself of the Ruhr Authority, the Occupation Statute and western tutelage, West Germany might go into limbo and thence eventually into the Russian bloc.
