Failure in Rebuilding an Occupied Country

Iraq? Nope. Try Germany.

I recently came across an interesting article from 1947. Did you know that ex-President Herbert Hoover went, at then-President Truman's request, to do a survey of post-war Germany? His task was to find out why the United States was still having to spend half a billion dollars each year to support it former enemies, some two years after the end of the war. I think you'll enjoy this snippet. It should sound a little familiar:

Europe, calloused by privations, hunger, cold, and the daily sweep of the scythe of the Grim Reaper, was startled but neither surprised, nor greatly shocked, by the report of ex-President Hoover to President Truman on the appalling conditions in Germany.

That Hoover found the standard of living, housing and food of the German people the 'lowest in 100 years of Western civilization,' is called a terrible indictment of war, of modern warfare and its devastation.

And it is a terrible indictment of the postwar policies of the victorious Allies toward the utterly crushed German nation and people who surrendered unconditionally.

In some ways, it sounds quite a bit like what we see in the New York Times these days, doesn't it (though the author is a tad more melodramatic, if that's possible)? The balance of the article, however, is actually much more even-handed than the modern-day equivalent would be in that it actually ascribes blame not just to the U.S., but also to the Soviet Union, Holland, Belgium, Denmark, Poland and Czechoslovakia (mostly for making unreasonable demands for land and reparations). It even, if you can believe it, takes a swipe at France for grabbing the Saar region of Germany for itself without asking anyone for permission (perhaps the author was laboring under a misunderstanding -- it couldn't possibly be the case that France acted unilaterally).

Oh, and one other difference: Hoover went at Truman's request, rather than on his own in an attempt to humiliate and thwart the sitting president. That's certainly changed in the intervening years.