When he looked at West Germany's economy from 1945 to 1951, German analyst Werner Abelshauser decided that foreign aid was not needed to start the recovery or to keep it going. Cowen found that the economic recoveries of France, Italy, and Belgium, started before the Marshall Plan. Belgium relied heavily on free market economic policies after its liberation in 1944, and had the fastest recovery. It also did not have the severe housing and food shortages seen in the rest of continental Europe. 