The Marshall Plan, formally the European Recovery Program, was the United States' program to rebuild Western Europe after the Second World War. Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed it in a June 1947 speech at Harvard University's graduation ceremony, responding to Europe's devastation and its vulnerability to Communist influence; Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act in March 1948 and approved funding that eventually rose to more than twelve billion dollars for Western European reconstruction. The plan brought a resurgence of European industrialization and investment, while also stimulating the US economy by creating markets for American exports, and it helped establish foreign aid as a lasting tool of American foreign policy. Soviet participation was considered but rejected, since Stalin distrusted the economic influence it would give the United States over Eastern Europe.
Facts
Key ProvisionFormally the European Recovery Program, announced by US Secretary of State George Marshall in June 1947 and enacted by Congress in 1948, it channeled several billion dollars in American economic assistance to sixteen Western European countries over four years to rebuild industry and infrastructure devastated by the Second World War. Recipient countries were required to cooperate on reducing trade barriers and coordinating recovery through the Organisation for European Economic Co-operation, the forerunner of today's OECD; the plan is widely credited with accelerating Western Europe's postwar economic recovery and, by design, with strengthening Western European states against Soviet political influence in the early Cold War. 1 Classification
Document TypeLegislative Act or Statute 1 Connections
Associated With
Together the military alliance this treaty founded and the economic aid the Marshall Plan provided formed the two pillars of early US Cold War strategy toward Western Europe.
Source Founding Treaty (NATO)
Influenced
The economic cooperation and collective-security thinking fostered by the 1948 Marshall Plan, alongside the Truman Doctrine, is widely credited by historians with building the transatlantic solidarity that led directly to the North Atlantic Treaty the following year.
Source Marshall Plan, 1948 (Office of the Historian)
Sources
1. Marshall Plan, 1948 (Office of the Historian)
U.S. Department of State, Office of the HistorianQuote
Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act in March 1948 and approved funding that would eventually rise to over $12 billion for the rebuilding of Western Europe.
Wikidata: Marshall Plan
Wikidata Q4576, class allow-list match, case-insensitive label variant (w-bbfill-smallsix2-0926/resolve_ci.ps1)View the Source Founding Treaty (NATO)
North Atlantic Treaty OrganizationAssociated With: North Atlantic TreatyView the Source Marshall Plan (Wikipedia)
In Group: Treaties and Agreements of 1946 to 1989, Lead paragraphQuote, In Group: Treaties and Agreements of 1946 to 1989, Lead paragraph
The Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program, ERP) was an American initiative enacted in 1948 to provide foreign aid to Western Europe.
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