Western Europe's post-WWII economies

This report presents a range of statistics relating to the economic recovery following the end of the Second World War in 1945, and the post-war economic boom that swept across Western Europe until the mid-1970s. After the war, ideological differences between liberal democracy and communism took center stage in Europe. Foreign investment from the U.S. saw American influence asserted across the continent's west, as a means of containing the spread of communism and Soviet influence. This coincided with a period of peace, economic stability, and integration, which fostered the most prosperous period in European history. Nonetheless, these decades were among the most prosperous in modern history, until inflating oil prices following conflict in the Middle East resulted in a global recession, bringing this period of growth to a close. This report includes data relating to U.S. foreign investment, the "Golden Age of Capitalism" and how it ended with the economic crisis of the 1970s, as well as the changing European lifestyles in these decades.