The most formidable of the many great challenges facing statesmen of the West after V-E Day was to tie Germany into Europe and Europe into Germany, both economically and politically. Most of them knew from the outset that this must take place as part of a larger recovery process that would eventually restore a Europe wrecked by two world wars to economic conditions like those that had obtained in the nineteenth century – with open borders, convertible currencies, competition, and the free interchange of ideas, a place where re-knit commercial and financial ties between nations would create essential networks of prosperity and so prevent war. This was the aim of all liberals, including men like John Maynard Keynes, who (at least for the medium term) thought state intervention necessary in order to restore the social and economic conditions under which market recovery could take hold. There was, as he understood, a disjunction between means and ends. Sound ideas and effective action did not often go hand in hand in the ravaged Europe of 1945. Hope that self-sustaining growth could be set in motion through the market would remain only a dream until governments had been stabilized, institutions rebuilt, and laws enforced. Cooperation was called for between industry and commerce on the one hand and government on the other.