Title: Marshall Plan in the Cold War - History
Headings: Marshall Plan in the Cold War
Marshall Plan in the Cold War
The Marshall Plan in the Cold War
Cite This Article

Content: Marshall Plan in the Cold War - History
Marshall Plan in the Cold War
History » Cold War » Marshall Plan in the Cold War
Loading...
The Marshall Plan in the Cold War was a strategy to turn former WW2 enemies into allies by rebuilding their shattered economies. One of the enduring myths of early Cold War history involves the so-called Marshall Plan laid out by Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947. With Western Europe in economic ruin, some American policymakers suggested that massive injections of aid were necessary in order to jump-start those economies. An anti-Communist rationale was also offered for the program: Since Communism was thought to thrive amid conditions of poverty and despair, economic recovery in Western Europe would undercut whatever attraction Communist propaganda might hold there. Loading...
Loading...
The Marshall Plan in the Cold War
The fact is that this program worked no better than any other government giveaway program. France, Germany, and Italy began their economic recoveries before any Marshall aid was disbursed. Austria and Greece, which received sizable amounts of Marshall aid per capita, began to recover only as it was being phased out. Britain received twice the Marshall aid that Germany did, yet British economic growth lagged far behind Germany’s over the next decade. West Germany’s postwar economic recovery was so explosive, in fact, that the Germans actually coined a word—Wirtschaftwünder—to describe it.