Title: What was the goal of the Marshall Plan? | Yahoo Answers
Headings: What was the goal of the Marshall Plan?
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Anonymous
What was the goal of the Marshall Plan?
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Content: It also provided jobs for American workers, and a market for American goods as the European trading partners became viable again. Not only was it in the American interest to pursue the Marshall Plan, plainly as Harry Truman would have said, "It was the right thing to do". ...Show more
llordlloyd
Lv 6
1 decade ago
Thinking Americans like Marshall and Truman realised the depression had contributed directly to the causes of World War 2- they couldn't ignore poverty and a lack of economic development as 'someone else's problem'. The communists were challenging capitalism- if liberal democracy could not make European standards of living better, why bother with it? They would be far more likely to accept communism. France, Italy and Greece were already quite sympathetic to left-wing ideas. Secondly, the US had grown incredibly rich from World War 2- the wealth of the British empire was theirs in war debts to be repayed, while America had suffered no direct damage to its infrastructure and had taken relatively few casualties. A large wad of cash needs to be invested somewhere... and a recovering Europe was better for US multinationals. This is not to deny the altruistic aspects of the Marshall Plan- it was a great moment in American history and today is known by every American schoolkid as evidence of America's benevolence and kindness. But just remember it never would have happened with Reagan as president, or with Paul Wolfowitz in charge of the World Bank.