Retaining the market economy does not mean that Li Xiaofeng immediately launched the NEP as Lenin did after Lenin ended his war communist policy, because, hehe, because that would be death!

At present, Europe has no foundation for a market economy at all, and when the national credit is completely destroyed and all the materials are high in shortage, the regulating effect of the market is undoubtedly infinitely close to zero. If you look at Europe in 1945, even if you have gold and silver, you don't want to buy what you need on the regular market, you can only go to the black market. In fact, the black market was very short of supplies back then, and money (especially precious metals or dollars) was not always satisfied.

If there is such a ruler, he will be overturned to the ground by the angry people in a minute, and he will step on 10,000 feet in a minute.

So how did Europe get out of the doldrums? There may be comrades who want to say, it is the aid of the United States! It's the Marshall Plan! That's what history textbooks teach, and it's undeniable that U.S. aid is also quite critical, but it's not the most important thing.

What really supported European countries out of the trough from 1945 to 1953 was the planned economy, which many comrades could not even imagine! Yes, comrades, you read that right, it is a planned economy, one might even say a highly centralized planned economy.

In those years, whether it was Britain, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, Norway, all implemented a highly centralized planned economy!!

Clement. Attlee is familiar with all of them, but what did his biographer say about the work of the Labour Prime Minister in those years?

"The period between 1945 and 1951 was the result of the application of socialist principles by the Labour Party and, to a large extent, the result of the wartime mobilization of a state organisation."

Suffice it to say, control of industry, social services and brokerage services, followed by nationalisation (mainly minerals, railways, commodity transport and public utilities) and regulation of medical services were the programme of the Labour Party after 1945. In short, a free economy is highly regulated.

Not only in the UK, but also in France and Italy. In France, for example, air transport, banks, 32 insurance companies, utilities, minerals, munitions companies, aircraft manufacturing, including the auto giant Renault were all nationalized.

Even, on December 4, 1945, Jean. Monet presented President de Gaulle with his Plan for the Modernization of Industrial Facilities. A month later, the "General Planning Administration" headed by Monet was established. Later, Monet set up modernization committees for various industries (mining, electricity, transportation, building materials, steel, agricultural machinery, petroleum, chemicals, fertilizers, shipping, and synthetic fibers), and in fact the main function of these committees was to draw up plans. A year after the establishment of the "Directorate General of Planning", the first national plan submitted by it was adopted by the French Cabinet without objection.

Of course, Monet's "General Planning Administration" was much more sophisticated than the Supreme Council of National Economy and the Planning Committee of the Soviet Union. The guidelines were not so mechanical, for example, unlike their Soviet counterparts, which made plans that were specific and quantitative, and that they would set a production quota. Monet's plans were all indicators, setting targets and not specifying specific outputs. The main drawback of the Soviet plan was its insistence on arbitrarily and strictly stipulating production figures by sector and by commodity. The Monet Plan was limited to providing the government with a strategic and balanced means to actively nurture certain approved objectives.

Let's put it this way, in those difficult times, the whole of Europe adopted a largely similar approach – a planned economy. Because in the era of material shortage, it is necessary to concentrate on doing great things. It is necessary for the state to control the vast majority of the means of production and then distribute them more rationally, so that it can survive. And the market economy, to be honest, is quite weak in this regard, not to mention that the European market has been almost destroyed, and the common people have almost lost their purchasing power, and the commodity economy will not be able to play at this time.

Of course, the planned economy is not without its problems. Because of the focus on big things, most of the countries that implement their plans tend to increase public investment, such as infrastructure, which undoubtedly accounts for the lion's share. But as a result, there is much less investment left for food and housing, and even less for health, education and other public services, and zero for non-critical consumption.

This pattern of expenditure in itself will not make any ordinary people happy, especially in countries that have long suffered from material shortages, and the opinions of ordinary people are naturally even greater. The problem is that if you don't spend so much money, without roads, railways, and factories, you will not be able to allow goods and materials to flow well, nor will you be able to exchange them for valuable foreign exchange, and in the long run, the national economy will still be able to struggle at a low level, and the future will be bleak and bleak.

This is simply a paradox, if we engage in infrastructure construction and increase public investment, there will be no money for social welfare, and the common people will complain and rebel. If infrastructure construction and public investment are cut, it will not be able to drive employment and create more wealth, and in the future, we can only live a tight life, and when it accumulates to a certain extent, the people are still complaining and rebelling.

Long pain is better than short pain, just do it! I guess that's what the leaders of Europe thought at the time. So we can see that in that era, the choices of the big guys were surprisingly consistent, the British were "frugal" and waiting for economic recovery, France and Italy had almost no private capital markets, and all major investments were made by public funds, such as the first Monet plan, which favored investment in industry at the expense of domestic consumption, housing and public services.

And the consequences of this are quite interesting, protests, strikes, and demonstrations swept Europe in those years, and in an instant Europe collectively turned to the left, and **** ideology was unprecedentedly rampant. This is really a curious example to ponder.

The people in power tried to save the country with the **** planned economy, and this caused the people to revolt, and the people in the rebellion thought that **** communism was the way to save them from the sea of suffering. Anyway, it's a dead end!

Anyway, things in Europe in those years were so interesting, and the only thing that made Li Xiaofeng feel depressed was that Comrade Iron and Steel was indifferent in the face of such a good situation, and did not have the slightest intention of encouraging the Communist Parties of Britain, France, and Italy to launch a revolution, and the Communist Parties of these countries seemed to be very satisfied with the situation, so they missed a good opportunity.

Anyway, Li Xiaofeng was puzzled by this, obviously in 1946 communism made an unprecedented breakthrough in history, in Italy the Communist Party won nearly 20% of the vote, in France it received nearly 30% of the vote, if you count the close relatives of the Communist Party and other socialist parties, the votes can be more than 50%, which was almost unimaginable before the war!

It seems that the proletariat is completely awakened, and it seems that an unprecedented upsurge of proletarian revolution is about to break out. But why didn't the later events follow this script? Hehe, this topic will be discussed later, but it will return to the topic of this chapter - the planned economy.

According to conventional thinking, the main cause of Europe's post-war economic difficulties was destruction, and the destruction of the productive forces by the war. Is this really the case?

I'm afraid not! Take Germany as an example, according to the general parlance, the Anglo-American strategic bombing destroyed Germany's production capacity, and the country was "flattened". Were Germany's losses actually that great? By May 1944, only 20 percent of the German factories had been destroyed, and even in the Ruhr area, the area where Allied bombardment was most concentrated, two-thirds of the factories and machinery were still intact. In other countries, such as the Czech Republic, industry and agriculture continued to flourish during the German occupation.

There are even some countries that have prospered like never before during the war, such as Sweden and Switzerland, not to mention that this pair of Swedish characters remained neutral in the war, but they are really bastards who play for the tiger. 40% of Germany's pig iron is provided by Sweden, and in order to prevent Britain and the United States from sanctioning it, Sweden pulled Switzerland, and this money was transited through Switzerland. To put it bluntly, Switzerland is helping Germany launder money, and where does Germany's money come from? Nature is plundered by it.

Even Switzerland, which not only laundered German money and acted as a payment channel, itself made a huge contribution to Hitler's war. Between 1941 and 1942, 60 per cent of Switzerland's arms industry, 50 per cent of its optical industry, and 40 per cent of its machinery production were produced for the Germans, who were paid for the gold they plundered. The Boer-Olikon Small Arms Company was selling submachine guns to Germany until April 1945! Even that month, when the Allies forced Switzerland to sever diplomatic relations with Germany and side with the Allies, Switzerland chose to refuse!

Not only that, but most of the wealth looted by the Nazis was also deposited in Swiss banks, such as the Germanic Imperial Bank, which is known to have stored about 1.638 billion Swiss francs of gold in Switzerland. When the Jews were ready to flee to Switzerland, Switzerland openly demanded that Germany indicate on its passport whether the passport holder was a Jew or not, and if so, then refuse to enter the country directly!

The Jews probably hated Switzerland, because a significant number of Jews chose to keep their property in Swiss banks to avoid being swallowed by the Nazis. But the Jews had no idea that there was no way to go to Switzerland to enjoy the property, and when they died in the concentration camps, when their descendants demanded it from Switzerland, Switzerland chose to get in the way and refuse to pay under the pretext of banking regulations. Not only that, but later a large number of Nazis hid the looted property in Switzerland and then used Switzerland as a bridge to escape, is the role of Switzerland positive?

Later generations, when they spoke of Switzerland, always mentioned how awesome it was as a permanently neutral country and how disdain it was to join the United Nations. Is this the case? The reason why Switzerland failed to join the United Nations is not that bullshit permanent neutral country can't join the United Nations, Sweden is the same permanent neutral country, not the same as mixing in the United Nations! Why is Switzerland special?

In fact, it is not because Switzerland is so good, nor because the status of a permanent neutral country does not allow it, but when the United Nations was founded, Switzerland was the target of the United Nations. Because he served Germany in World War II, a vote of hooligans, including the Soviet Union, France, and the United States, saw him very unpleasantly, and was once ready to repair him. For example, at the Washington Accords of May 1946, the big hooligans forced Switzerland to hand over 250 million Swiss francs as a "voluntary" donation for the reconstruction of Europe!

Even if Switzerland paid this money, it still couldn't discourage the big hooligans, so they were directly blocked from the United Nations and did not accept it at all! And if it drags on like this, Switzerland will be permanently shut out of the United Nations.

After complaining about Switzerland, let's continue to get down to business, the most serious damage suffered by Europe in World War II is not actually the elimination of industrial production capacity, in fact, most of those factories are standing there unharmed, but because the country collapsed, they can only stop working.

If saving Europe's economy is about restoring production capacity, then these capacities are actually there, they are not wiped out. It is only the credit of the state that has been destroyed. In other words, workers do not believe that they can resume their lives when they resume production, nor do they believe that the wages they receive will be able to buy consumer goods. To put it bluntly, it is confidence that is destroyed in Europe! How to restore their faith is the first question.

This requires a credible country to come up with real money or abundant materials to convince people that work will not be in vain, that bread will be available, butter will be available, and houses and cars will not be a problem. And the Marshall Plan of the United States provides exactly this kind of confidence, otherwise, Europe will really be blown up, and even with the industrial capacity of the United States, it will not be able to rebuild it in a short time. All the Americans do is feed Europeans for a while and believe that the future exists, it's as simple as that!

Of course, it is not easy to do this, because even if it is to solve the problem of food and clothing, the Americans have to work a lot of effort. The first food problem, since 1946, the whole of Europe has basically relied on the United States to feed its stomach, why? In part, Central and Eastern Europe, which had been the breadbasket of Europe, has been devastated and food production has been massively reduced, and these countries are embarking on a round of land reform, which has not been so successful and has indirectly undermined food production. Of course, it cannot be ignored that the natural disasters that began in 1945 were also an important cause, from Wallachia to Moldavia, from Western Ukraine to Central Volga, with large-scale agricultural failures.

According to the description of the rescue agencies at the time, a mass famine had already formed! The average weight of a one-year-old child is only 3 kilograms! There is even a phenomenon of cannibalism!

At that time, Europe was almost dependent on food provided by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration, but the standard of food and clothing was quite low, and the per capita calorie intake in the region before the war was about 2,500 per day. In 1946, it was only 1,500 per capita, and by the beginning of 1947 the standard had dropped further to only 1,000!

In the French polls of 1946, "food", "bread", and "meat" continued to surpass everything else, and it can be said that whoever can feed Europe will occupy Europe.

As a time-traveler, Li Xiaofeng naturally knew how terrible the period from 1945 to 1947 was. Especially in 1947, it was a really disaster year. Spring saw the worst weather since 1880, with frozen rivers, impassable roads for weeks, and ice paralyzing the entire railway system. Well, it was easy to survive this harsh winter, and soon Europe was tested by the hottest summer on record. The drought caused damage to a large area of crops, which directly reduced yields by a third compared to the previous year!

If you think about it, the economic situation is very bad, and it is struggling on the brink of famine, and then the crisis erupts. European countries, which had lost a lot of their wealth in the war, simply did not have enough hard currency to buy grain on the international market, and even most European countries did not have gold reserves for international trade. This led directly to a round of inflation, in the case of Hungary, which had a peak of inflation even worse than in Germany in 1923! 100,000 Pengers (the Hungarian monetary unit) was equal to about 1 dollar, and when Hungary replaced Penger with forints, one Penger was equivalent to one thousandth of a cent.

In Germany, however, this is not the case, because there is no currency in circulation, so that cigarettes have taken the place of money as a means of payment. Teachers are paid 5 packs of cigarettes per week. The value of an American cigarette in Berlin ranged from $60 to $165, which made the American GIs rich, and they engaged in cigarette rationing and scalping, and the American soldiers in Berlin sent home $11 million more than their actual salary!

At that time, the editor-in-chief of Foreign Affairs magazine, which had a huge influence on the foreign policy of the U.S. Congress, Hamilton . Fish had this impression of the situation in Europe in July 1947: "There were too few things, too few trains, trams, buses, and private cars to transport people to work on time, let alone for rest days; There is too little unadulterated flour for bread, and even then the bread provided to the heavy laborers is not enough to provide energy; There is also too little paper for the newspaper, so the news is all a rough idea; There are too few seeds for farming, and too little fertilizer to provide nutrients for the seeds; There are too few houses that can live in it, and there is often not enough glass on the windows; There is too little leather for shoes, wool for weaving clothes, kitchen gas, cotton cloth for diapers, sugar for jam, grease for stir-frying, milk for babies, and soap for laundry. ”

Li Xiaofeng knew very well that the Soviet Union would not be able to gain a foothold in Central and Eastern Europe if all these problems were not solved...... (To be continued.) )