After World War II, in 1947 Lewis H. Brown wrote at the request of General Lucius D. Clay A Report on Germany, which served as a detailed recommendation for the reconstruction of post-war Germany, and served as a basis for the Marshall Plan. General Clay selected Brown to write the report because of Brown's broad industrial and war experience. While writing, Brown spent time in Germany, and also personally interviewed General George C. Marshall, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, General Joseph T. McNarney, General John H. Hilldring, John Foster Dulles, James F. Byrnes, former President Herbert Hoover, R. C. Lefingwell, Otto Jeidels, and former Senator Sinclair Weeks, among many others. Chapter II of the book is a memorandum of the Johns-Manville economist William C. Bober to Lewis H. Brown entitled The German Situation Today. Chapter I Section 2 entitled Background of Policy is a re-arrangement of a study about the economic plans for Germany from 1946 by James P. Warburg with the original title Germany – Nation or No-Man’s-Land. 1947 The European Vicious Cycle Brown found out different vicious cycles in the European economies, which could affect the United States. In 1947 Western European countries were on the brink of bankruptcy, while Germany was already bankrupt. But Germany was a key part of Western Europe and Europe could not be reconstructed without doing likewise in Germany. European countries primarily trade with one another. The countries of Europe were so closely interrelated and economically interwoven, that whatever affected one inevitably affected the others. So the underproduction in the coalfields transmitted the scarcities of Britain to the rest of Europe. Only an economic entity, through which trade flows freely, regardless of boundaries, would be a prosperous Europe. The German Economic Destitution in 1947 A fundamental challenge facing Germany was that it was now cut off from its Eastern breadbasket. Before the war the East of Germany produced 65 percent of its rye, potatoes and sugar beets, 70 percent of its brown coal and 75 percent of its potash vital for fertilizers. The farm production of Western Germany was 30 percent below prewar. In Western Germany lived 48 million people, 40 million of whom did not live on farms. The farms could only produce for 20 million people; 20 million must be fed from abroad, paid by export or by plain relief. In 1947 Germany was not able to pay for food imports from