As much as America was to be the leader and role model in this new era, all the efforts of U.S. occupation forces and all the money delivered by foreign aid could not address the fundamental weakness of postwar development efforts. The salient point of the post–World War II period was that by 1957 no nation had adopted the four pillars that made American exceptionalism successful in the first place. As developed in the first volume of this history, those pillars consisted of a Christian (mostly Protestant) religious foundation, free enterprise, common law, and private property with titles and deeds. Missing even in postwar Europe, these features were almost totally unknown throughout the rest of the world. Long-established nations such as France and Italy seemed little different from emerging states such as Uganda or Cameroon, or the reconstructed countries of Germany or Japan.
