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U.S. History 1877-Present 9.9: The Aftermath and the Marshall Plan 20 Views
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Description:
Uncle Sam struggles to stop Soviet Stalin from spreading sadness and socialism.
Transcript
- 00:03
The war left Europe devastated. We're talking a total [Berlin 1945 footage]
- 00:07
economic collapse combined with flattened infrastructure. America was
- 00:12
determined to help rebuild Europe. Because we were nice? We'll put it like this: A [America steps in]
- 00:17
strong Europe meant we'd have somebody to trade with (sell to), totally necessary
- 00:22
for us to have a strong economy. Possibly even more importantly, we needed to make
Full Transcript
- 00:26
sure the Soviet Union didn't remake Europe in its own image. See, when Germany [Anti-Soviet poster]
- 00:30
fell, that meant there was a whole lot of territory up for grabs, and the grabbiest
- 00:35
local power was Stalin and the Soviet Union. Like grabbier than whoever keeps [Stalin over map]
- 00:39
taking all the free doughnuts in the Shmoop break room. We suspect Stalin's ghost itself. [Stalin's ghost comes for doughnut]
- 00:42
USSR had already picked up Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania on its tromp
- 00:48
through Germany, and it soon gained control of Romania, Bulgaria, and [spread of USSR mapped]
- 00:51
effectively Poland. Next to fall were Hungary, and Czechoslovakia. Yugoslavia
- 00:56
had its own communist leader named Tito, who kind of did his own thing. But he was [Tito pictured]
- 01:01
a communist, so the U.S. wasn't going to invite him do the pizza party. Stalin was [U.S. pizza party]
- 01:05
still hungry for more of Eastern Europe, and he wanted a communist puppet regime
- 01:09
and Soviet occupied Germany. Well, we couldn't help but imagine a regime of [Stalin eyes map]
- 01:13
muppets just then, but that wasn't the concern. Well, this bugged the heck out of U.S. [Communist Kermit sings]
- 01:18
officials. They thought they had done a pretty good job at shutting down [Truman laments]
- 01:21
oppressive regimes in the area and were pretty pouty about the idea that they'd
- 01:24
have to do it again. Plus, they looked at the vacuum of power in Europe and [Vacuum over Europe]
- 01:28
realized how quickly a strong and decisive leader could snap up all the
- 01:32
territory he wanted. If part of Germany fell, would the rest go with it? Would Italy [Stalin on vacuum]
- 01:37
and France go with the Communist program? Well, not if President Truman could help them. He
- 01:41
sent $400 million dollars in assistance to Greece and Turkey in 1947 [Newspaper headline]
- 01:45
to try and stabilize their economic and political situations so the Red Army
- 01:49
wouldn't look quite so attractive. Well this policy of containing Soviet power
- 01:54
was originally proposed by George Kennan, a State Department official. Well, Kennan [Kennan pictured]
- 01:59
figured the best policy would be to allow the Soviet Union to keep what it had
- 02:03
already snagged but to keep it from taking any more.
- 02:07
Even though this was originally Kennan's idea, it was called the Truman Doctrine, 'cause [Truman steals ideas]
- 02:11
presidents have dibsies. Keep in mind that just about everywhere in Western
- 02:15
Europe qualified as politically threatened in the wake of World War II. [stamp on map]
- 02:18
Crops had been razed, buildings had been demolished, and a whole generation of men
- 02:23
had died on the battlefield. So on June 5, 1947 the American Secretary of [post-war photos]
- 02:28
State George Marshall announced the European Recovery Program, aka the
- 02:32
Marshall Plan. He got to put his name on that because, well he was just that tough. [Marshall creates aid plan]
- 02:37
Congress approved the plan to send $17 billion to the U.K., France, West
- 02:42
Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, and Belgium. Marshall painted all this as
- 02:46
innocent humanitarian aid. Nope, nope, not trying to stop the spread of Soviet [America disguises aid]
- 02:51
power at all. Marshall even offered aid to the Communist States in the east as well, [communist states decline aid]
- 02:55
but they politely declined. And too bad for the Eastern European bloc, since the
- 03:00
economic aid revived the Western economy like sweet tea on a scorching hot day. [people given sweet tea]
- 03:05
Meanwhile, most of Eastern Europe stayed pretty poor. Sometimes history hurts.
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