Benefits Of The Marshall Plan

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Did the Marshall Plan actually want to help Europe or did they just want to stop Communism from spreading into Europe?

In this essay I will be using a variety of sources to help me answer and examine The Marshall Plan, as well as my research question.

To begin with, what was the Marshall Plan, in other words “The European Recovery Program”? It was a planned by George Marshall, who was secretary of State at the time; his vision was to rebuild Europe after World War 2. Some might say, the real reason that the United States helped out was to stop the spreading of communism from Stalin, since Russia was along the borders of the Eastern Europe countries, and those were the countries US wanted to help. The USSR hated the idea of the Marshall Aid.

America had two goals when it came to spending 13 billion dollars:

Goal 1: USA had a feeling the more the countries were poor, the more they wanted to become communist. Thus, American’s giving aid would reconstruct their success in Europe.

Goal 2: USA was trying to destabilize The Soviet Union in Eastern Europe. They tried doing this by building up the West side of Europe, as they expected to put the East of Europe under pressure and display to them how amazing life could be if they went by the American way.

In this cartoon, everything symbolizes something specific; the ball represents the plan that the American’s had in mind, the Marshall Plan. This is evident as “Marshall Plan” is printed onto the ball.

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