Twelve years ago what remained of Germany's bombed-out cities and factories was littered with more than 500 million cubic yards of rubble, and the German people—some of whom were getting only half as many calories as the average Chinese peasant—stumbled through the ruins of their homeland in dazed hopelessness. Last week the free half of Germany, long since recovered, was embarrassed by its riches. It had so much foreign currency that its hoard was becoming a handicap.
Adenauer's West Germany, with but two-thirds the population of Hitler's Reich, is now Western Europe's richest nation. Thanks to a roaring export trade...