The conventional wisdom about large-scale disruption assumes that destruction is permanent and that recovery, if it happens at all, will be slow and partial. Berlin is a useful corrective. When the political will existed and the institutional support was there, an entire nation rebuilt itself from almost nothing in a timeframe that would have seemed absurd to anyone standing in the rubble in 1945. The Marshall Plan helped. Allied political commitment helped. But what mattered most was that people decided the situation was not hopeless, and then acted on that decision. We’re going to need that kind of energy.