Reconstructing Germany, 1938-1949: United States foreign policy and the cartel question

Using the most recently opened document collections in the United States, this dissertation places the American controversy over German reconstruction in the context of the American antitrust debate and the rise of Keynesian thought during World War II. It extends the discussion about United States postwar planning by including the contributions of historically neglected participants such as the Council on Foreign Relations, the Office of Strategic Services, the Department of Justice, and German emigre scholars in United States government service.; Nazi Germany's prewar creation of a closed economic and political bloc in Europe challenged not simply the American design for a liberal world economic order, but also the conviction that trade liberalization per se could lead to international peace and prosperity. This dissertation analyzes the cartel question, not only because, from an economic and ideological perspective, Americans approached the problem of National Socialism as one of economic concentration, but also because the shift from more radical structural reform programs to more conservative growth-oriented politics manifested itself most clearly in the American antitrust debate of the 1940s. Losing domestic ground when "Dr. Win the War" replaced "Dr. New Deal," American antitrust advocates took the fight to the "German cartel octopus" abroad. What made United States policy toward Germany so ambiguous during the 1940s, therefore, was an internal struggle among American policy-makers over the extension and the legacy of the New Deal.; In a bitter controversy over German decartelization and deconcentration during the American occupation period, the radical New Deal trustbusters were pushed out as the moderate recovery advocates took over. This was not simply a struggle over Morgenthau versus Marshall Plan rationales, but over the depth and direction of structural reforms. Finally, this dissertation examines how German liberal and socialist reformers tackled the problems of monopoly power and responded to American occupation policies. Such an analysis reveals that United States foreign policy toward Germany interacted with internal German developments, namely the rise of neo-liberal economics and growth-oriented socialist politics.