Retaining the market economy does not mean that Li Xiaofeng immediately launched the new economic policy just like after Lenin ended the war, because, hehe, because that was a tragic death!

Now Europe has no foundation for a market economy at all. When the country's credit is destroyed and when all the materials are in high demand, the market's regulatory effect is undoubtedly infinitely close to zero. Look at Europe in 1945, even if you have gold and silver, you don't want to buy the items you need in the regular market. You can only go to the black market. In fact, the materials on the black market were very tight at that time, and money (especially precious metals or US dollars) may not be able to return satisfactorily.

In such a situation, I am really trying to die. If there is such a ruler, I will be overturned by the angry people and step on ten thousand feet in minutes.

So how did Europe get out of the trough back then? Some comrades may say that it was the aid from the United States! It was the Marshall Plan! This is indeed taught in history textbooks. It is undeniable that the aid from the United States is also quite critical, but this is not the most important.

What truly supports European countries from the trough from 1945 to 1953 is the planned economy that many comrades can't imagine! Yes, comrades, you are not wrong, it is the planned economy, or even a highly concentrated planned economy.

During those years, whether it was the United Kingdom, France, the Netherlands, Italy, Belgium, Denmark, or Norway, they implemented a highly centralized planned economy!!

Everyone is familiar with Clement Attlee. How did his biographer comment on the work of the Labor Prime Minister in those years?

"The period between 1945 and 1951 was the result of the Labor Party's implementation of the socialist principles and, to a large extent, the result of a country's organization of wartime mobilization."

Let me put it this way, controlling industry, social services and brokerage services, then nationalizing (mainly minerals, railways, commodity transportation and public utilities) and regulations on medical services were the Labour Party’s policy program after 1945. In short, the free economy was highly regulated.

This is not only the United Kingdom, France and Italy. Take France as an example. Air transport, banks, 32 insurance companies, public utilities, minerals, arms companies, aircraft manufacturing, and automobile giant Renault are all nationalized.

Even on December 4, 1945, Jean Monet submitted his "Industrial Facilities Modernization Plan" to President Charles de Gaulle. One month later, the "General Programme Agency" headed by Monet was established. After that, Monet established modernization committees for various industries (mining, electricity, transportation, building materials, steel, agricultural machinery, petroleum, chemical industry, fertilizers, shipping and synthetic fibers). In fact, the main function of these committees was to formulate plans. One year after the establishment of the "General Programme Agency", the first national plan submitted was passed by the French cabinet without any objection.

Of course, Monet's "General Planning Agency" is much better than the Supreme National Economic Commission and Planning Commission of the Soviet Union. Its guidelines are not so mechanical. For example, unlike Soviet counterparts who formulate plans, they will quantify them specifically and set a production quota. Monet's plans are indicators, only setting goals but not specific outputs. The main disadvantage of the Soviet Union's plans is to insist on arbitrary and strictly specifying output figures according to departments and commodities. The "Monet Plan" is limited to providing the government with strategic and balanced means in order to actively cultivate certain approved goals.

Let me put it this way, in that difficult era, the whole of Europe adopted a generally similar planned economy. Because in an era of shortage of materials, we must concentrate on doing major tasks. The country must master most of the means of production and distribute it more reasonably so that we can survive. To be honest, the market economy is quite weak in this regard, not to mention that the European market has been almost destroyed, and the people have almost lost their purchasing ability, and the commodity economy will not be able to play at this time.

Of course, the planned economy is not without problems. Because of the concentration of major tasks, most countries that implement the plan tend to increase public investment, such as infrastructure construction undoubtedly occupies the vast majority. However, in this way, investments for food and housing are quite small, while investments for medicine, education and other public services are even less, and non-critical consumption is zero.

This pattern of funding will not make any ordinary people happy, especially in countries that have long suffered from material shortages, the opinions of the people are naturally even bigger. The problem is that if you don’t spend money like this, without roads and railways, factories will not be able to make goods and materials flow well, nor will they be exchanged for valuable foreign exchange. In the long run, the national economy can only struggle at a low level, and the future will be extremely dark.

This is simply a paradox. If infrastructure construction increases public investment, social welfare will be gone, and the people will complain about rebellion. Cutting infrastructure construction and public investment will not drive employment and create more wealth. In the future, they will only have to live a tight life. When they accumulate to a certain level, the people will still complain and rebel.

It is better to have a short pain than a long pain, so just do it! I guess the leaders of Europe at that time basically had this idea. So we can see that in that era, the choices of everyone were surprisingly consistent. The British "savvy and frugal" were waiting for economic recovery. France and Italy had almost no private capital markets, and all major investments were invested by public funds. For example, the first Monet plan was inclined to invest in industries and sacrifice domestic consumption, housing and public services.

The consequences of doing so are quite interesting. Protests, strikes, and parades were popular in Europe in those years. In an instant, Europe collectively turned to the left, and the trend of thoughts was unprecedentedly rampant. This is truly a strange example worth thinking about.

Those in power used the planned economy of **** to try to save the country, which caused the people to resist. The people in the resistance believed that **** was the way to save them from the sea of ​​suffering. By the way, this was a dead end!

Anyway, things in Europe were so interesting in those years. The only thing that made Li Xiaofeng feel depressed was that in the face of such a good situation, the Iron Comrades were indifferent and did not inspire the British, French, and Italy to launch a revolution. The **s of these countries seemed to be very satisfied with the situation and missed a good opportunity.

Anyway, Li Xiaofeng was puzzled by this. It was obvious that in 1946, the *** achieved an unprecedented breakthrough in history. In Italy, the *** received nearly 20% of the votes, and in France, the *** relatives and other socialists could vote more than 50%, which was almost unimaginable before the war!

It seems that the proletariat has been completely awakened, and it seems that an unprecedented proletarian revolution is about to break out. But why did the later things not follow this script? Hehe, let's talk about this topic later, and we will return to the topic of this chapter's planned economy.

According to traditional thinking, the main reason for the post-war economic difficulties in Europe was destruction, and productivity was destroyed by war. Is this the real situation?

I'm afraid not! Take Germany as an example. According to general terms, the strategic bombing of Britain and the United States destroyed Germany's production capacity, and this country was "flooded". In fact, Germany's losses were that great? As of May 1944, only 20% of the factories destroyed by Germany were in ruins. Even in the Ruhr area, the area where the Allied bombings were the most concentrated, two-thirds of the factories and machinery were still intact. In other countries, such as the Czech Republic, industry and agriculture were still flourishing during the German occupation.

Some countries even flourished unprecedentedly in wars, such as Sweden and Switzerland. Although this pair of Sweden remained neutral in the war, they were really bastards who made accomplices. 40% of Germany's pig iron was provided by Sweden. In order to prevent Britain and the United States from sanctioning them, Sweden pulled Switzerland to Switzerland, and this money went to Switzerland. To put it bluntly, Switzerland is helping Germany launder money, and where did Germany's money come from? Naturally it plundered.

Even Switzerland not only laundered money for Germany but acted as a payment channel, which itself made a huge contribution to Hitler's war. From 1941 to 1942, 60% of the Swiss arms industry, 50% of the optical industry, and 40% of the mechanical output were produced for the Germans, and the remuneration they received was the gold plundered by Germany. The Boolean-Olicorn Light Weapons Company was still selling submachine guns to Germany until April 1945! Even that month, when the Allies forced Switzerland to break diplomatic relations with Germany and stood on the side of the Allies, Switzerland chose to refuse!

Not only that, most of the wealth plundered by the Nazis also exists in Swiss banks. For example, what is well known is that the Germanic Bank stored about 1.638 billion Swiss francs of gold in Switzerland. Or Switzerland, it acted as a pawn in Germany in persecuting Jews. When the Jews were about to flee to Switzerland, Switzerland openly asked Germany to indicate on its passport whether the passport holder was a Jew. If so, then directly refuse to enter!

The Jews probably hated Switzerland to death, because a considerable number of Jews chose to store their property in Swiss banks to avoid the Nazis' swallowing. However, these Jews did not expect that they would not be able to enjoy these property in Switzerland. When they died in concentration camps, when their descendants asked Switzerland for the property, Switzerland chose to interfere with it and use bank regulations as an excuse to refuse payment. Not only that, a large number of plundered property by the Nazis in Switzerland and then fled with the help of Switzerland as a bridge. Is Switzerland's role here positive?

When people later talked about Switzerland, they always mentioned how awesome it is, a permanent neutral country, and how disdainful it is to join the United Nations. Is this the truth? The reason why Switzerland failed to join the United Nations is not that bullshit permanent neutral country that cannot join the United Nations. Sweden is also a permanent neutral country, and it is different from being in the United Nations! Why is Switzerland special?

In fact, it is not because Switzerland is so awesome, nor because the status of a permanent neutral country is not allowed, but when the United Nations was founded, Switzerland was the target of the United Nations being particularly criticized. Because it served Germany during World War II, a number of big hooligans, including the Soviet Union, France, and the United States, were disliked by them, and they were once ready to repair them. For example, at the Washington Agreement in May 1946, the big hooligans forced Switzerland to hand over 250 million Swiss francs to "voluntarily" donate them to Europe for reconstruction!

Even if Switzerland paid the money, it still failed to relieve the gangsters, so it was directly blocked from the United Nations and did not accept it at all! And once this was dragged down, Switzerland was forever blocked from the United Nations.

After complaining about Switzerland, we continue to get back to the point. The most serious damage suffered by Europe in World War II was not the elimination of industrial production capacity. In fact, most of the factories stood there safely, but because the country collapsed, they could only shut down work.

If saving the European economy is to restore production capacity, then these production capacity are actually there and they have not been eliminated. What has been eliminated is only national credit. In other words, workers do not believe that they can restore their lives by restoring production, nor do they believe that the wages they receive can buy consumer goods. To put it bluntly, what Europe has been destroyed is confidence! How to restore their confidence is the first priority.

This requires countries with credit to take out real money or rich materials to make people believe that work will not be in vain, butter will also have houses and cars. And the Marshall Plan of the United States also provides such confidence. Otherwise, Europe will be really flat, and even with the industrial capacity of the United States, it will not be able to rebuild it in a short time. What the Americans do is just to make Europeans temporarily fill their stomachs and believe that the future exists. It's that simple!

Of course, it is not easy to do this, because even if it is to solve the problem of food and clothing, Americans have put a lot of effort into it. The food problem that has been hit first, since 1946, Europe has basically relied on the United States to make a full stomach. Some of the reasons are that Central and Eastern Europe, which were originally European granaries, have suffered huge damage and large-scale grain production cuts. In addition, these countries are beginning a round of land reform. This reform was not so successful, and it indirectly destroyed grain production. Of course, it cannot be ignored that the natural disaster that began in 1945 is also an important reason, from Wallachia to Moldavia, from Western Ukraine to central Volga, there were large-scale agricultural failures.

According to the description of the rescue agency at that time, a large-scale famine had already formed! The average weight of a one-year-old child was only 3 kilograms! There was even a phenomenon of cannibalism!

At that time, Europe almost lived on food provided by the United Nations Aftermath Relief Agency, but the standard of food and clothing was quite low. The per capita calorie intake in this area before the war was around 2,500 per day. In 1946, the per capita average was only 1,500, and by the beginning of 1947, the standard further dropped to only 1,000!

In the 1946 French poll, "food", "bread" and "meat" continuously surpassed everything else. It can be said that whoever can make Europe full can occupy Europe.

As a time traveler, Li Xiaofeng naturally knew how terrible the period from 1945 to 1947 was. Especially in 1947, it was really a disaster year. The worst weather since 1880 occurred in spring, the river surface was frozen, the roads were out of traffic for several weeks, and the icy cracked the entire railway system. Well, it was finally easy to survive this severe winter, and soon Europe was tested by the hottest summer since meteorological records. Drought caused a large area of ​​crops to be affected, which directly caused the yield to fall by one third compared to the previous year!

Think about it, the economic situation was originally very bad, and he was struggling on the brink of famine, which directly led to a crisis. European countries that lost a lot of wealth in the war did not have enough hard currency to buy food in the international market, and even most European countries did not have gold reserves for international trade. This directly led to a round of inflation. Take Hungary as an example. The peak of inflation was even worse than that of Germany in 2019! 100,000 Penguo (Hungarian currency unit) was about 100,000 Penguo (Hungarian currency unit) was about 1 USD. When Hungary used Forlin to replace Penguo, one Penguo was equivalent to one thousandth of a cent at that time.

There is no such trouble in Germany, because there is no currency in circulation, so cigarettes replaced the status of money as a means of payment. Teachers’ salaries are 5 packs of cigarettes per week. The value of an American cigarette in Berlin ranges from $60 to $165, which makes the American soldiers rich. They engage in cigarette rationing reselling activities. At that time, American soldiers sent home $11 million more than their actual salary!

Hamilton Fish, editor-in-chief of the US Congress's foreign policy, had such an impression of the situation in Europe in July 1947: "There are too few things to transport people to work on time, too few trains, trams, buses and private cars, not to mention on-the-clock rides; there is too little flour used to make bread, and even so, bread provided to heavy workers is still

Not enough energy; too little paper is provided to newspapers, so the news is all about it; too few seeds for farming, too little fertilizer for nutrients for seeds; too few houses can live in, and there are often not enough glass on the windows; leather for shoes, wool for weaving clothes, kitchen gas, cotton cloth for making diapers, sugar for making jams, oil for cooking, milk for babies, and soap for washing clothes, all of them are too little!"

Li Xiaofeng knew very well that if the problem of all this was too little, the Soviet Union would not be able to gain a foothold in Central and Eastern Europe... (To be continued.)
Chapter completed!