Format:
graph. Darst., Tab., zahlr. Lit.Hinw.
ISSN:
0042-5702
Content:
There is still no consensus on the importance of the Marshall Plan to Germany's post war economic development. Traditional economic history in Germany argues the Marshall Plan was essential for Germany's "Wirtschaftswunder". A newer school among economic historians believes post war reconstruction in Western Europe and Germany was more or less independent of the Marshall Plan. The importance of the Marshall Plan should be seen as a device to establish credible political commitments to economic integration within Germany and Europe. U.S resource and monetary aid was largely an initial pump primer used to create an economic centrepiece. Post-war reconstruction in Western Europe should be viewed not as a sequence of correspondent national recoveries, but rather as the politically controlled reconstruction of the intra-European division of labour, with Germany as its industrial centre. Against the background of insurmountable claims on Germany, the European Payments Union (EPU) was helped set up by the Marshall Plan. As a system of mutual free trade and financial credit commitments, the EPU was definitely superior to the system of protectionist bilateral trade agreements. By helping Germany bind itself to new trading partners, the Marshall Plan, i.e. the EPU effectively re-integrated the pre-war system of European trade and payments, despite the bad record of clearing arrangements under the Nazi New Order. (Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte / FUB)
In:
Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte, [Berlin] : De Gruyter Oldenbourg, 1953, 43(1995), 3, Seite 473-519, 0042-5702
In:
volume:43
In:
year:1995
In:
number:3
In:
pages:473-519
Language:
German
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