Most of the improvement was in Germany, which received far less MP money than Britain and France.
Postwar prosperity correlates with the level of free markets. Germany embraced free markets up until 1970, Britain and France did not.
People love to point at policy, because it's a thing we can control, but the most important factors are often cultural issues we both don't control, and don't entirely understand.
The situation back then was decidedly _not_ what the term "free market" (of the libertarian variety) would imply today.
The US did not want to create competition, but to break monopolies and to create a unified market for its industrial complex
The remnants of that goal are visible today with Big Tech
The bases were there to protect Germany against the Soviets.
I remember once on the autobahn around 1970, and a fighter came by hedgehopping at high speed. He was a few feet off the ground, and looked like just under Mach 1. The citizens didn't particularly like the noise and disruption, but they understood the need for the Air Force to train hard.
I also remember touring East Berlin (yes, East Berlin) in 1969. Going through Checkpoint Charlie and seeing the Wall is plenty convincing of the need for the US military being there.
France, on the other hand, didn't much care for the US military bases and wound up pushing them out.
BTW, the US Military was pretty thorough in making sure US personnel and military families behaved like guests in Germany, as they were invited guests. Ever since the Berlin Airlift, the US was friends with Germany.
The Americanization of Germany came later. I recall visiting a shopping mall in Germany in the 2000's, and you could not tell you were in Germany rather than in any suburb in America. Shopping malls did not exist there in 1970.
All the more sad that the chief component of Japanese animosity towards Japan-stationed US forces are sexual crimes, particularly in Okinawa where the Marines especially don't seem to know how to keep their dicks in their pants. There have been at least two incidents just this year if I recall, and that's just of the ones we know.
I really can't blame the locals wanting Americans to get the fuck out, security be damned.
I found out many years later that if I had committed a crime like shoplifting in Germany, my father would have been cashiered. The military took their guest status very seriously. An officer who could not control his family was not fit to be an officer.
I don't blame locals for feeling however they feel. It's their country.
Just so we're clear, I'm talking about cold hard data and the rate is "too many".
https://www.military.com/daily-news/2024/09/10/okinawa-gover...
https://theintercept.com/2021/10/03/okinawa-sexual-crimes-us...
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/09/sexual-assault...
Protecting Germany's sovereignty also protected America's interests. They were aligned.
Germany (like France could and did) could have expelled the US military any time they wanted to.
No, not legally. (And also not in reality)
1955 were the treaties, conventions, protocols and schedules of the Bonn-Paris Conventions, the Pariser Verträge in German. The treaty terminating the occupation of (West) Germany was the revised “Convention on Relations between the Three Powers and the Federal Republic of Germany”, in German often short „Deutschlandvertrag“. The three powers in article 2 of that convention explicitly reserved the rights for Berlin and Germany as a whole and relevant for this the right to station armed forces in Germany (article 2, articles 4 and 5).
https://www.bgbl.de/xaver/bgbl/start.xav#__bgbl__%2F%2F*%5B%... (PDF)
The 1955 conventions were a package deal. Part of it was the “Convention on the Presence of Foreign Forces in the Federal Republic of Germany”, which further assured the Three Allied Powers right to station forces in Germany, although limited to what was already there.
https://www.auswaertiges-amt.de/resource/blob/248488/1f12562...
Both conventions were only to be terminated by all signatory states or by a future German reunification agreement and peace treaty. That was in effect the “Treaty on the Final Settlement with respect to Germany“ of 1990, the 2+4-treaty, in which the allied powers, including the Soviet Union, terminated their rights. Hence final settlement.
But that in the end has nothing to do with my original response, which was "the US sets up its bases out of its own self interest". Even if those interests align, it doesn't mean it's there to honor German wishes. If those interests had not aligned, the US would've still stayed there, this is as clear as the header of this page being orange.
Recall I've lived through that, and my father was pretty involved in it in the military bases there. I've had German friends, and been in their homes, and interacted with them.
They were not "occupied" against their will.
You haven't presented any evidence whatsoever for your conclusion. I've presented first hand, second hand, and documentary evidence for my case.
P.S. My dad also spent time stationed in France. He said the French made it very clear they wanted the USAF out. He said it was quite a contrast with Germany.
I can only repeat, I wrote "The US places its military worldwide out of its own interest, not to protect anyone". Whatever Germany wanted there does not make any difference.
Also again, the best I can do is respectfully disagree about the idea Germany asking the US to leave, and the US respecting its sovereignty. That West Germany was sovereign since 1955 is only part of the story, East Germany became sovereign in 1954, but it would be difficult to argue it meant anything of value (because it didn't).
France made sure to avoid an US occupation government and rebuilt its own independent military. It could make a choice.
"Sovereignty of the Federal Republic of Germany was granted on May 5, 1955, by the formal end of the military occupation of its territory"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legal_status_of_Germany
When I lived near Luke AFB in the early 70's, Luke was training Luftwaffe pilots to fly F-104 Starfighters. I used to ride my bike onto the base and go to the flight line, and watch those lawn darts take off. They'd get halfway down the runway and light the afterburners! Freakin' awesome. Oh I wanted to be a pilot soo bad.
An F-104 was little more than a pilot strapped to a monster of a jet engine.
Edit: Public opinion can also be shaped, not least after the trauma of the Nazi period and in the midst of the Cold War. Actual influence behind the scene is usually not made known to public, and the influence of the US over Germany has been overwhelming.
Not once living there did I ever get the impression that the Germans felt the US presence was forced on them. They appreciated that the US was there to keep the Red Army at bay.
Of course, sometimes they'd complain about the Americans having bad manners, usually justifiably, and sometimes they'd envy the wealth of the Americans. I even attended a German elementary school for a while, and nobody bullied me because I was an American. I was even invited by other students to their homes to play.
The US bases were of mutual benefit to the Germans and the Americans.
P.S. my father went from:
1. bombing Germany in WW2
2. being part of the military occupation in the early 1950s.
3. being part of NATO planning headquarters in Wiesbaden in 68-71. This was not an occupying force