Rebuilding Germany


Book Description

The social market economy has served as a fundamental pillar of post-war Germany. Today, it is associated with the European welfare state. Initially, it meant the opposite. Rebuilding Germany examines the 1948 West German economic reforms that dismantled the Nazi command economy and ushered in the fabled 'European Miracle' of the 1950s. Van Hook evaluates the US role in German reconstruction, the problematic relationship of Chancellor Konrad Adenauer and his economics minister, Ludwig Erhard, the West German 'economic miracle', and the extent to which the social market economy represented a departure from the German past. In a nuanced and fresh account, Van Hook evaluates the American role in West German recovery and the debates about economic policy within West Germany, to show that Germans themselves had surprising room to shape their economic and industrial system.




The Economic Consequences of the War


Book Description

This exploration of the statistical evidence on Germany's post-war reconstruction sheds new light on the foundations of German economic power.




Germany's Comeback in the World Market


Book Description

A great deal has been talked about the economic recovery of Western Germany since the Second World War. It is know htat this recovery was accompanied by the return of the Federal Republic to the markets of the world. Not so much is know abotu the details - about the work effected through the opitimism of the Minister for Economics, Professor Ludwig Erhard. In this book, the minister himself speaks. A detailed description is given of the stages by which first the Bizone, and then the Federal Republic, has effected the remarkable comeback which has created keen interest and concern. The book goes into the full detail which might be expected from on who is in charge of the entire machinery. The description of the way in which Government policy was employed to stimulate a free market economy is of great technical interest. Equally important is the detailed description of the way in which every nook and cranny is exploited to give the Federal Republic a foothold in foreign markets. No opportunity is neglected, from the fostering of the most ambitious long-term capital development schemes to the publication of day-to-day reports on trade openings. This book was first published in 1954.




Ludwig Erhard


Book Description

In the first English-language biography of one of the most important figures in postwar German history, Alfred C. Mierzejewski examines the life and service of Ludwig Erhard (1897-1977), West Germany's first minister of economics and second chancellor. Erhard liberalized the German economy in 1948 and is generally considered the father of West Germany's "economic miracle--the period of extraordinary growth in jobs and improvement in the standard of living in the 1950s that helped stabilize Germany's first successful democracy. While recent scholarship has dismissed Erhard's influence on Germany's economic recovery, Mierzejewski returns to little-cited German analyses and Erhard's own record and concludes that Allied currency reform and Erhard's liberalization of the economy were crucial triggers for Germany's unprecedented economic boom. Mierzejewski provides insight into Erhard's policies, his ideas, his character, and his relationships with Konrad Adenauer and Charles de Gaulle. By offering a fresh account of Erhard's career as a leader in postwar West Germany, Mierzejewski provides a deeper understanding of Germany's economy as well as its democracy.




German Industry and German Industrialisation


Book Description

Cover -- Half Title Page -- Title Page -- Copyright Page -- Original title Page -- Original copyright Page -- Contents -- List of Tables and Figures -- Preface -- 1 The Paradigm of German Industrialisation : Some Recent Issues and Debates in the Modern Historiography of German Industrial Development -- 2 Foreign Competition and Technological Change : British Exports and the Modernisation of the German Iron Industry from the 1820s to the 1860s -- 3 Tariffs and Market Structure : The German Zollverein as a Model for Economic Integration -- 4 Banking and Economic Growth : Banks and Industry in Germany in the Nineteenth-Century and their Changing Relationship During Industrialisation -- 5 Cyclical Trends and the Market Response: Long Swings in Urban Development in Germany, 1850-1914 -- 6 Sectoral Performance and Economic Development: The Backward Linkages of the German Pig-Iron Industry, 1871-1913, as a Factor in Macro-Economic Growth -- 7 'New Industries' and the Role of the State : The Development of Electrical Power in South Germany From c.1880 to the 1920s -- 8 The Political Framework of Structural Modernisation: The I.g. Farbenindustrie AG, 1904-1945 -- 9 Germany and the International Economy the Role of the German Inflation in Overcoming the 1920/1 United States and World Depression -- 10 Occupation Policy and Post-War Reconstruction : British Manpower Policy in the Ruhr Coal-Mines, 1945-1947, and West German Economic Recovery -- List of Contributors -- Index




West German Industrialists and the Making of the Economic Miracle


Book Description

West German Industrialists and the Making of the Economic Miracle investigates the mentality of post-war German (heavy) industrialists through an analysis of their attitudes, thinking and views on social, political and, of course, economic matters at the time, including the 'social market economy' and how they saw their own role in society, with this investigation taking place against the backdrop of the 'economic miracle' and the Cold War of the 1950s and 60s. The book also includes an assessment of whether the self-declared, new 'aristocracy of merit' justified its place in society and carried out its actions in a new spirit of political responsibility. This is an important text for all students interested in the history of Germany and the modern economic history of Europe.




Selling the Economic Miracle


Book Description

Through an examination of election campaign propaganda and various public relations campaigns, reflecting new electioneering techniques borrowed from the United States, this work explores how conservative political and economic groups sought to construct and sell a political meaning of the Social Market Economy and the Economic Miracle in West Germany during the 1950s.The political meaning of economics contributed to conservative electoral success, constructed a new belief in the free market economy within West German society, and provided legitimacy and political stability for the new Federal Republic of Germany.




The Economic Consequences of the War


Book Description

The 'German Question' dominated much of modern European history. In 1945, Germany was defeated and conquered. Yet, the Second World War did not destroy the foundations of her economic power. Dr Tamás Vonyó revisits Germany's remarkable post-war revival, tracing its roots not to liberal economic reforms and the Marshall Plan, but to the legacies of the war that endowed Germany with an enhanced industrial base and an enlarged labour force. He also shows that Germany's liberal market economy was in reality an economy of regulated markets, controlled prices and extensive state intervention. Using quantitative analysis and drawing on a rich historiography that has remained, in large part, unknown outside of Germany, this book reassesses the role of economic policy and the importance of wartime legacies to explain the German growth miracle after 1945 and the sharply contrasting experiences of East and West Germany.




West German Industry and the Challenge of the Nazi Past


Book Description

In this groundbreaking study, S. Jonathan Wiesen explores how West German business leaders remade and marketed their public image in the aftermath of World War II and the Holocaust. He challenges assumptions that West Germans - and industrialists in particular - were silent about the recent past during the years of denazification and reconstruction, revealing how German business leaders attempted to absolve themselves of responsibility for Nazi crimes while recasting themselves as socially and culturally engaged public figures. Through case studies of individual firms such as Siemens and Krupp, Wiesen depicts corporate publicity as a telling example of postwar selective memory.