Europe in Shambles

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Europe in Shambles

Europe was a mess after World War II. Multiple governments and powerful leaders had been overthrown, leaving a power vacuum that left Europe in chaos. The violence of the war also left behind mass destruction and poverty . Businesses and factories as well as homes had been destroyed leaving people without work or a place to stay. This caused Europe to sink into a massive economic depression. This is where the United States decided to step in.

The European Recovery Program (ERP), closely modeled after the Truman Doctrine’s policy of supporting Greece and Turkey, was announced in June 1947 by General George Marshall in his speech at Harvard University. He stated there that the ERP was directed against hunger, poverty and chaos, not against any county or doctrine. In order to solve the post-war disorder in Europe, to prevent left-leaning governments from rising up in reaction to Nazi occupation, and for humanitarian reasons, the United States loaned money and material support worldwide. This is most commonly known as the Marshall Plan.

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One of the main and well publicized goals of the Marshall Plan was to solve the post war disorder running rampant across Europe. Marshall recognized that the United States did not have the resources to rebuild Europe country by county without any cooperation, so the Plan was set up to force participating nations to work together in order to plan the most effective way to make use of American Aid. This spawned the creation of the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC), which was mainly a planning and coordinating group. The OEEC comprised sixteen free, European countries. The Marshall Plan was also an unpreced...

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