Page 144 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

1945/1946 – STUPOR AND SEARCH FOR DIRECTION 117

independent minds, with a press and radio system operating under
positive direction on the minutest detail of make-up and content; a
nation morally ruined by the disruption of its family ties; [...] a nation
of an urban and industrial civilisation whose cities are almost all in
ruins, its factories smashed; a nation without food and raw materials,
without a functioning transport system or a valid currency; a nation
whose social fabric has been destroyed by mass flight, mass
migration, the compulsory mass settlement of strangers; a nation
whose huge national debt has been repudiated, where bank deposits
have been either confiscated or rendered worthless by depreciation,
and mass expropriation of industrial and commercial property has
been ordered or “voted” as an act of political vengeance; a nation
which, having lost provinces that were the source of one-fourth of its
food, is in imminent danger of a second partition between its former
western and eastern enemies; a nation in which [...] there is no
guarantee of personal liberty, no habeas corpus and no democracy,
[...] a country where, amidst hunger and fear, hope has died and with
3
it the belief in all the ideals.

This quote is intentionally cited in virtually full length in order to
illustrate the political and economic circumstances but also level of morale
from which any reconstruction of German political and economic life had
to emanate. People were simply disarmed by the facts. Life in post-war
Germany in 1945 was dominated by a sense of stupor and by an
instinctive search for a direction. The war changed everything and a return
to the way things had been before 1933 was out of the question – this
included the former capitalist economic system. As capitalism was
distinctly associated with the great depression that followed the stock-
market crash in 1929, the waste of unemployment, the inequalities,
injustices, inefficiencies and the discredited politics of the inter-war years,
governmental planning and the enhanced role for the state in social and
economic affairs became the political religion in post-war Germany in
1945. The belief in centralist governmental economic planning favoured
4
by 54 per cent of the residents in the American zone in January 1946 was
matched by the faith in improving economic conditions: in December
1945, 78 per cent of the respondents were optimistic despite their
recognition that the road to full recovery was long and only 7 per cent
5
anticipated a worsening economic situation. A very broad constituency
took up the idea that a well-planned economy would not only improve
economic conditions but also meant a fairer and better-regulated society.
Thus most political parties at that time reacted to that socialist Zeitgeist,