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The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. The reconstruction plan, developed at a meeting of the participating European states, was drafted on June 5, 1947.
It offered the same aid to the Soviet Union and its allies, but they refused to accept it. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent.
The Marshall Plan was crafted as a four-year plan to reconstruct cities, industries and infrastructure heavily damaged during the war. In addition to economic redevelopment, one of the stated goals of the Marshall Plan was to halt the spread communism on the European continent.
Implementation of the Marshall Plan has been cited as the beginning of the Cold War between the United States and its European allies and the Soviet Union, which had effectively taken control of much of central and eastern Europe and established its satellite republics as communist nations.
The reconstruction plan is also considered a key catalyst for the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), a military alliance between North American and European countries established in 1949.
The Marshall Plan Volume is a one-of-a-kind book compiled by Mr. Kenneth Sprankle, Clerk and Staff Director, Committee on Appropriations of the House of Representatives, at the request of Virginia Congressman J. Vaughn Gary. Marshall Plan VolumeThe 3700-page volume contains President Truman’s Message to Congress recommending a program of United States support for European recovery
The volume was presented to the Marshall Foundation in 1968 by Congressman Gary in the belief that it would be “better preserved and of more use in the Memorial library.”
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