Title: What was the Marshall Plan?
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Content: What was the Marshall Plan? The European Recovery Programme (nicknamed the ‘Marshall Plan’) was set up because the economic infrastructure of Europe had been destroyed by the Second World War and because this – and the coldest winter on record – had by 1947 reduced the people of Europe to starvation. Also, in response to Soviet ‘salami tactics’, Congress had in March 1947 decided to ‘support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.’ Returning from a fact-finding mission, a shocked General George Marshall told Truman that all of Europe would turn Communist unless the European economy could be jump-started. So Truman agreed. An alternative plan to finance regeneration from massive German reparations – by Treasury Secretary Henry Morgenthau – was rejected. Marshall announced his Plan, not in Congress, but to students at Harvard University on 5 th June 1947. He explained his idea in simple terms: the European economy had been destroyed because the Nazis had reorganised it to support their war effort. Now, townspeople could not produce enough to afford to buy food from the farmers;