Page 29 - The Making of the German Post-war Economy

2 THE MAKING OF THE GERMAN POST-WAR ECONOMY

academics and of the main political parties in the post-war economic
reconstruction. Often overlooked, the various conceptions by German
parties gave impulse to and shaped political and economic developments.
For many years, however, the prehistory of the Federal Republic and
the constitutive period between 1945 and 1949 were predominantly
examined in relation to international politics and the dominant role of the
Allies. The assumptions in many scholarly works that the conflict over
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socio-political systems among the four victorious Allied nations had a
predetermining effect on the socio-political and economic (re)formation
of defeated Germany, and further that the occupying powers constituted
the fundamental factor in subsequently shaping the political and
economic developments has meant that the contribution of German
parties to the reorganisation of post-war West Germany has been
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neglected in historical and political research. The prime reason for the
paucity of German academics writing about the prehistory of Federal
Germany can be seen in their initial reservations about confronting their
own shameful national history, aggravated by the allegations made by the
1960s student protesters that the old political and economic elites had
been partly, albeit covertly, restored. Eventually, growing consciousness
of their own constitutional past detached from the self-inflicted disaster
of the inglorious Third Reich, with its painful and soul-destroying
consequences for the German people, along with the gradual accessibility
of archival sources, prompted an increasing interest in the socio-political
and economic developments during the Allied occupation which is
expressed in later accounts and editions; no longer could the prehistory
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of the Federal Republic of Germany be considered the blind spot of
research as described by Hans-Peter Schwarz in 1966. Most studies,
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however, concentrate on political and constitutional developments and
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relatively few publications recount the economic reorganisation and
resurgence of post-war West Germany. While some of these argue that
the post-war German economic ‘miracle’ had its roots in the policies of
the former Minister for Armaments and War Production, Albert Speer,
and the investments of the Nazis in the 1930s, others built on the
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restoration paradigm by denying that the economic resurgence was
initiated by German parties but rather by the international trading system
and by the fact that the nation fell into longer-term trends of twentieth-
century economic growth. More balanced accounts have weighed the
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relative importance of domestic approaches and policies versus the
importance of international and historical economic patterns determining
West Germany’s economic reconstruction. In examining German
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influence in the course of post-war West Germany’s socio-political and
economic reorganisation and resurgence, however, historians, economists