The Marshall Plan

The Marshall Plan lays out the steps to help rebuild Europe after World War 2. 

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
They need help. We'll discuss as we took a bite
out of history with ingles markets. World War II ended
on September second, nineteen forty five, and left a trail
of devastation across Europe. And in nineteen forty six and
in nineteen forty seven, the situation was no better. The
economies of Great Britain and France were rather the lowest,
and with those struggles they couldn't jumpstart the rest of Europe. Unemployment, homelessness,
and starvation were common across the continent. On June fifth,

(00:22):
nineteen forty seven, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, under
President Truman, spoke at Harvard on the chaos in Europe.
He described the conditions completely that the US step in
to help the people of Europe, first for humanitarian reasons,
but also because the economy of the US could not
survive without these countries active in the global market. He
also touched on communism, saying governments, political parties, or groups
which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefore,

(00:45):
politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.
Congress listened, and in nineteen forty eight past the Economic
Cooperation Act, also known as the Marshall Plan, to set
aside four billion dollars to help rebuild Western Europe. This
has been a bite out of history with Ingles markets