From http://www.marshallfoundation.org/
"A Summary of the Marshall Plan"
"Even now a model for positive economic diplomacy, the Marshall Plan was a rational effort by the United States aimed at reducing the hunger, homelessness, sickness, unemployment, and political restlessness of the 270 million people in sixteen nations in West Europe. Marshall Plan funds were not mainly directed toward feeding individuals or building individual houses, schools, or factories, but at strengthening the economic superstructure (particularly the iron-steel and power industries). The program cost the American taxpayers $11,820,700,000 (plus $1,505,100,000 in loans that were repaid) over four years and worked because it was aimed at aiding a well-educated, industrialized people temporarily down but not out. The Marshall Plan significantly magnified their own efforts and reduced the suffering and time West Europe took to recover from the war. The program--whose official title was "European Recovery Program"--aimed at: (1) increasing production; (2) expanding European foreign trade; (3) facilitating European economic cooperation and integration; and (4) controlling inflation, which was the program's chief failure."
Note- Part of the reason behind doing this was that a disintergrating Europe was fertile ground for the grass roots take up of communism.
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