Rebuilding Europe after WWII
Rebuilding Germany
The labor of refugees from other countries helped West Germany's growing economy. The German industry was flourishing. The West German unit of currency, the Deutsche mark, became one of the most stable in the world. West Germany was a leading industrial nation by 1958. West Germnay was also one of the world's most stable democracies. The first West German chancellor, Konrad Adenauer, was a Christian Democrat. He was committed to a market economy and establishing the rule of law as a principle of the German State. Adenauer was closely aligned with the West, being dedicated to anticommunist and anti-Soviet. He encouraged Germans from the East side to move over to the West Side. This is why the East German government built the Berlin wall.
Postwar Britain
British voters rejected Winston Churchill's Conservative Party in 1945. The Labour Party, a moderate socialist party, formed Britain's postwar government. Britain became a welfare state. A welfare state is a state which the government takes primary responsibility for the social welfare of its citizens. The British government would provide free medicare for everyone. The industry remained privately owned. For many years after the war, Britain had many economical challenges. Many workers had died in the war, many fled to other countries such as the U.S. Canada, or Australia. Great Britain lost valuable possessions and colonies after the war. British voters elected a new Conservative government to power in 1951. Winston Churchill was Prime Minister again, and reversed some of the Labour government's nationalization policies. Great Britain was slow at economic recovery after the war. In the 1960s Great Britain's industrial productivity fell to one of the lowest national levels in the industrialized world.