Mass Consumption of Goods and Services

In another way too the 1950s marked the beginning of a new phase in economic development: the spread to Europe of a truly democratized mass consumption. The symbol of the new Europe was the automobile: from being a luxury item driven by a relatively small elite, it came within the purchasing range of average families. The Volkswagen, originally designed as the National Socialist ‘People’s Car’, but never made in general production in Hitler’s Germany, began to roll off assembly lines run by the British military occupation authorities. In West Germany, there were 515,600 private cars in use in 1950, but 4,066,000 in 1960. The architect of what became known as the economic miracle or Wirtschaftswunder, Ludwig Erhard, spoke of refrigerators in every house; and that dream was soon accomplished.

Economic modernization also meant the development of services. Whereas traditional industrial employment stagnated and declined, the supply and exchange of services rose as Europeans became more prosperous. Indeed the consumption of services, from advertising and banking to tourism, became as much a feature of the so-called consumer society as the purchase of goods. One of the most expensive of all services was generally taken in a socialized form. Medical services began to figure increasingly prominently as a source of expense, but usually indirectly through tax and insurance systems. The improvement of medical provision had been one of the most important reforms proposed by politicians as part of making a better world after the war.

The Americanization of European business and consumption practice in the 1950s was sometimes derided and opposed as the cocacolonization of Europe (the French populist leader Pierre Poujade made banning Coca Cola a major campaign point). In the end, Europe was as unable to do without the culture embodied by Coca Cola as without computers.