ABSTRACT
In December 1947, Germany consisted of little more than a vast stretch of ruins, its cities and transport systems almost totally destroyed by three years of Allied bombing, its political, social, and economic infrastructures only minimally reconstructed by the victors after twelve years of National Socialism. For the average German, survival meant a black market for even the most basic goods and an Allied military government dictating public life. The Morgenthau Plan envisioned a future Germany as an agricultural hinterland, its heavy industry disassembled to prevent the nation from ever again creating a war machine. Moreover, Germany ceased to exist as a nation: the four zones (American, British, French, and Soviet) represented four different legislative, executive, and judicial entities. Germans thus faced a loss of national identity, aggravated by a loss of faith in the monolithic fascist system which they had actively or passively supported and which was now held accountable for the genocide of 6 million European Jews and a world war that had cost over 50 million lives.
