The Communist state was in a permanent condition of undeclared war against its own citizens. Like Lenin, Stalin understood the need for enemies, and … - Tony Judt

Thus the post-war Bretton Woods system did not come about all at once. The participants at Bretton Woods had anticipated universal international convertibility by the end of the 1940s, but their calculations did not allow for the political and economic consequences of the coming of the Cold War (or, indeed, of the Marshall Plan). Put differently, the high ideals of those setting out plans and institutions for a better international system presumed a stable era of international cooperation from which all would gain.

To outside observers, Communism was a single political entity, shaped and run from the Moscow ‘Centre’. But from Stalin’s perspective matters were more complicated. From the late Twenties through to the outbreak of war, Moscow had indeed succeeded in imposing its control over the world Communist movement, except in China. But the war had changed everything. In its resistance against the Germans the Soviet Union had been forced to invoke patriotism, liberty, democracy and many other ‘bourgeois’ goals. Communism had lost its revolutionary edge and become, deliberately, part of a broad anti-Fascist coalition. This had been the tactic of the pre-war Popular Fronts too, of course, but in the Thirties Moscow had been able to keep tight control of its foreign parties—through financial aid, personal intervention and terror.

The economic history of post-war western Europe is best understood as an inversion of the story of the immediately preceding decades. The 1930s Malthusian emphasis on protection and retrenchment was abandoned in favor of liberalized trade. Instead of cutting their expenditure and budgets, governments increased them. Almost everywhere there was a sustained commitment to long-term public and private investment in infrastructure and machinery; older factories and equipment were updated or replaced, with attendant gains in efficiency and productivity; there was a marked increase in international trade; and an employed and youthful population demanded and could afford an expanding range of goods.
The post-war economic ‘boom’ differed slightly in its timing from place to place, coming first to Germany and Britain and only a little later to France and Italy; and it was experienced differently according to national variations in taxation, public expenditure or investment emphasis. The initial outlays of most post-war governments went above all on infrastructure modernization—the building or upgrading of roads, railways, houses and factories. Consumer spending in some countries was deliberately held back, with the result—as we have seen—that many people experienced the first post-war years as a time of continuing, if modified, penury. The degree of relative change also depended, of course, on the point of departure: the wealthier the country, the less immediate and dramatic it seemed.