In 1945 Ruhr industry was a smoldering ruin, an ugly monument to the collapsed and discredited civilization for whose misdeeds it was partly responsible. Within ten years it would be rebuilt, reorganized, and integrated into a new political culture for whose impressive subsequent accomplishments it can share credit. It would be wrong to assume, as many commentators in the 1950s once did, that this remarkable transformation occurred because the management of German heavy industry was somehow “Americanized”: No internal conversion from evil old ways to good new ones took place after the war. Nor should one have been expected. Punishment and retribution were the main themes of Allied policy toward the Ruhr trusts; by comparison to them, the missionary impulse felt by a few U.S. policy makers was unimportant. The captains of German industry were unimpressed by such do-gooding. To them Allied policy was confused, senseless, arbitrary, and destructive: They wanted above all else to get out from under it. The coal and steel leaders had only limited means of defense: The Allies alone could decide when the Ruhr would recover its freedom of action. Yet they needed the cooperation of management and labor in order to keep the economy going and, after August 1949, had to be careful not to discredit the new West German government. Ruhr heavy industry could also count on receiving at least some support from foreign producers and governments whose economic welfare required the revival of the German economy.