Spreading the Culture of Economic Growth: Productivity Missions and the Americanization of the German Economy

This article examines how the Marshall Plan stimulated a culture of economic growth in postwar Germany, specifically through an international exchange programme known as ‘productivity missions’. From 1948 until the late 1950s these missions facilitated thousands of encounters between American and European managers, workers and experts in order to spread American industrial and managerial practices and, as a consequence, to boost postwar economic recovery in the capitalist world. Run by the Economic Cooperation Administration and the Organization for European Economic Co-operation, the productivity campaign enjoyed the support of both national governments as well as business associations and trade unions. While there is ample historiography on the political intentions and the economic consequences of the Marshall Plan, we know less about the productivity missions as vehicles of cultural transformation. Based on first-hand reports and archival evidence from both sides of the Atlantic, this article explores the cultural dimensions of the productivity campaign. It argues that the missions were an important catalyst for the dominant role of productivity and economic growth in postwar German society.