Images of the Marshall Plan in Europe

The Marshall Plan is considered the most successful foreign aid program in American history. It played a crucial role in helping to rebuild Western Europe after World War II, reintegrate West Germany into the West, maintain American interest in EuropeI1/2s future, contain communism, and launch American consumer democracy and improving the standard of living in Europe. It also finalized the progressing division of Europe into a democratic/capitalist West and communist East.

This volume focuses on -selling the Marshall Plan- both to sceptical Americans and Europeans in the late 1940s and early 1950s. The Economic Cooperation Administration in Paris administered the distribution of American Marshall Aid. It also directed the propaganda effort: 250 films were produced (newsreels, documentaries, and feature films). Travelling train exhibits were organized that were shown all over Europe and by ship on Greek islands; and busses travelled to the remotest Austrian Alpine valleys to show films about how Marshall Plan aid increased Austrian economic productivity.