An anonymous opinion piece that was published in the August 24, 1946 issue of COLLIER'S MAGAZINE in which the writer expressed his astonishment in finding that peacetime, after such a hard-fought victory, should seem so anti-climactic:
- from Amazon:
 
"Consumers goods are so scarce everywhere that all major countries are suffering more or less inflation. A wave of big strikes in this country earlier this year slowed production badly, so that it seems impossible for us to freeze our own relatively mild inflation at its present point."
Out of the smoldering ruins of Japan came the Honda factories, while Germany amazed their old enemies by rapidly beating their crematoriums into Volkswagens. Confidently managed by a fellow who only a short while before was serving as a lowly private in Hitler's retreating army, Volkswagen quickly retooled, making the vital improvements that were necessary to compete in the global markets.
Ludwig Erhard (1897 – 1977), West Germany's Minister of Economics between the years 1949 and 1963, once remarked that Germany was able to launch its "Wirtschaftswunder" (economic miracle) by implementing the principles of a market economy and laissez-fair capitalism within the framework of a semi-socialist state. The attached column is a 1945 magazine profile of Clement Attlee (1883 – 1967: U.K. Prime Minister: 1945 - 1951) it appeared just a few weeks following the long over-do wrap-up of the Second World War and the hasty ouster of Conservative Party Prime Minister Winston Churchill (1874 – 1965).
You might also want to read an article about Soviet Foreign Minister Andre Gromyko.
An important news item came across the wire in mid-may, 1949:
"The delegates from Western Germany's 11 states gave final approval to the draft of the constitution for the new Federal Republic of Germany."
- but what matter was this to the thousands of Bavarians who were highly distrustful of the new government; they had their own gloried past that was largely due to the royal family known as the House of Wittelsbach:
"A strong faction is campaigning for the return to the throne of former Crown Prince Rupprecht. The eldest son of King Ludwig III, deposed in 1918, Rupprecht is a tall, thin man of vast education. He led Bavarian troops under Kaiser Wilhelm. In World War II, he was exiled to Italy. Since then he has been living with his family at Leutstetten Castle on Lake Starnberg near Munich." "If the Bavarian people desire monarchy, I shall respect their desire."
Nice work if you can get it... Printed years before Germany's surrender, here is the digitized copy of the English/German phrase book that was printed by the U.S. Army for distribution among those soldiers who would be occupying that country in 1945. It is beautifully illustrated by the cartoonist Milton Caniff and is sixty-seven pages in length. | 
