Marine diesels and reciprocating aircraft engines remained the technical enablers of globalization during the two interwar decades, and their mass-scale deployment made the decisive contribution to the outcome of the Second World War. By the conflict’s end, the US had built nearly 296,000 airplanes compared to about 112,000 in Germany and 68,000 in Japan.[47] In 1945, the United States emerged as the world’s dominant power, and the economic recovery of Western Europe was fast. Aided by the US investment (1948’s Marshall Plan), all of the region’s countries surpassed their prewar (1934–1938)
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