Postwar: A History of Europe Since 1945

by Tony Judt

People had money to spare and they were spending it. In 1950, West German retailers sold just 900,000 pairs of ladies’ nylon stockings (the emblematic ‘luxury’ item of the immediate post-war years). Four years later, in 1953, they moved 58 million pairs. In more traditional commodities the major impact of this revolution in spending came in the way goods were packaged and the scale on which they were sold. Supermarkets began to appear, notably in the 1960s, the decade when the impact of the increase in purchasing power was felt most dramatically. In the Netherlands, which boasted just seven supermarkets in 1961, there were 520 ten years later. In the same decade, the number of supermarkets in neighboring Belgium rose from 19 to 456; in France from 49 to 1,833.12