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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.

Language:
English Language

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

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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