[quote=@Veoline]
Isn't it a bit unreasonable to think that over 50 years after the end of the war, even with a terrible economic depression, European countries would not have recovered fully? Germany recovered from WWII pretty speedily, so if that is possible, anything is, really. Given, it had the Marshall plan and a debt erasure, but still.

Communists appeared in Europe only after the Russian Revolution, so I have no idea how things shaped out in PoW. In France, the Communist Party seceded from the SFIO (Socialist Party) in 1920. Without the Russian Revolution, it would probably have taken longer.

Anarchists were done with by the early 1900s. State repression in the last decade of the 19th century had seriously affected them.
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Post WW2 Germany is a special case because it saw the US and friends mediating the forgiving of a lot of post-war debt. In the instance of France for example it was to get snuggy with America so they can get support to protect themselves from Communism. And repairing Germany was considered priority to create a bullwark against the Soviet Union, which had extensive control and influence over Eastern Europe. Likewise was Japan.

In this pretense we have a party providing a great deal of mediation in the post-war effects of war since dictating who and who should not get repaid after the war for the severe debts owed to them and general debt forgiveness. It also has an additional party willing to pay off at least some if not most of the war damages in that nation to some degree, accelerating that country's rebound post-war.

True it could be exaggerated to run it over fifties years, but I don't think I or Vilage have said for certain that the Depression itself ran for fifty years. But what we would be looking at are sort of long-term effects of it and arguably a stunting or reorganization of money in Europe that changes the dynamic on the continent.


EDIT - also what Vilage said. Assuming there's been long-reaching effects of the war that's still an effect today also helps to lend explanation as to why France has been so negligent to everything over-all. The only thing they have any likely, reasonable authority over still is Madagascar, and that may still be very iffy.