Marshall Plan
The 1948–1952 US economic aid program that rebuilt Western European economies, distributing about $13 billion in grants.
Truman Doctrine: The 1947 US pledge to support countries resisting communism, committing America to an active global role. Set the political doctrine of containment that the Marshall Plan's economic aid put into practice.
European Recovery Program: The formal 1948 statute and four-year program through which Marshall Plan funds were appropriated and administered. The official name and legal framework of the plan itself, run by the ECA.
Schuman Declaration: The 1950 French proposal pooling French and German coal and steel under a common authority. Plan-era cooperation bodies became the template for European integration it launched.
Lend-Lease: The wartime program supplying Allies with arms and materiel on credit, ended abruptly in 1945. The immediate wartime predecessor, whose cutoff worsened Europe's crisis and shaped the new design.
Wirtschaftswunder: West Germany's rapid 1950s recovery, launched by the 1948 currency reform and Ludwig Erhard's policies. The canonical success case, where plan aid met radical market reform.
George C. Marshall: US Secretary of State 1947–1949, whose June 1947 Harvard speech proposed the European recovery program. He proposed the plan and lent it his name after a career as Army Chief of Staff.
Organization for European Economic Co-operation: The 1948 body of European recipients that jointly allocated Marshall Plan aid among member states. Recipients had to coordinate spending jointly, a condition that seeded later European integration.
Division of Europe: The splitting of the continent into rival Western and Soviet economic and military blocs. Forced Soviet rejection of the plan drew the economic border that became the Iron Curtain.
UNRRA: The United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration providing wartime and immediate postwar relief, 1943–1947. Relief versus recovery: UNRRA fed people, the plan rebuilt productive capacity.
United Kingdom and the Marshall Plan: Britain, the largest single recipient at about $3.2 billion, chafed at the plan's conditions. The largest recipient's strained experience shows what the strings on aid meant.