God bless America

The Most Noble Adventure contains a striking pair of photographs of the business district in Hamburg. The first, taken in 1945, shows shattered buildings, clouds of smoke and a virtually empty street. Five years later, the same scene is transformed. The damage has largely been repaired and the sidewalks are filled with well-dressed pedestrians. Was this extraordinary recovery, representative of what was happening all over Western Europe, a result of the Marshall Plan which pumped billions of dollars of American aid into a war-torn Europe? Or was it bound to happen sooner or later, once Europeans recovered their nerve and their will?

It is now 20 years since Alan Milward challenged the conventional wisdom that the Marshall Plan did indeed save Western Europe from economic catastrophe and quite possibly a Communist takeover. Curiously, in an otherwise admirable book, Greg Behrman relegates what has been a lively and important debate to his footnotes — yet it has considerable relevance for today.