Allianz, for example, which settled most of its policies under Germany's own sweeping post-war restitution programme, set up a team to examine 1.4m individual paper files on policies issued between 1920 and 1945 in order to try to trace any that remain unpaid.

ECONOMIST: Holocaust reparations

Other sections explain how post-war Germany was saved by the strict policies of the Bundesbank.

ECONOMIST: The lessons of German history haunt the single currency

If current pay practices are compared with those of the recent past, then the option explosion may be the most beneficial change in corporate policies in the post-war period.

ECONOMIST: No soft option

But for all his passionate logic Mr Powell was unable in the 1960s to persuade the barons of the Conservative Party to abandon the Keynesian policies of the post-war years.

ECONOMIST: Enoch Powell

The chancellor, say the Social Democrats caustically, must at least be congratulated for giving voters the chance to tell him what they think of policies that have brought post-war Germany's highest unemployment for more than six decades.

ECONOMIST: Battling on, for Germany and for Europe | The

Oh, how one yearns for the resurrection of Ludwig Erhard, the post-World War II economics minister whose tax-cutting policies made possible Germany's "miraculous" growth during the 1950s and 1960s.

FORBES: Fact and Comment