After any kind of disaster, we must learn to pick our selves up and work to prevent it from happening again. With the European economy destroyed and the world economy not looking any better, the disaster known as World War Two had a devastating effect on infrastructure, the economy, and human life. With the installation of the Marshall Plan, Europe saw a great recovery after the war and was able to get back on its feet fairly quickly. With this quick recovery, there were also problems as some policies would infringe on the rights of citizens to help energize the nation. Not to mention that the Marshall Plan was a way for America to not only help the people of Europe but also as a way for America to spread its own ideas across a wide area.
With this plan, people and cities were getting what they needed and in some cases more: “this promised all the abundance that a revved-up capitalist war economy could deliver. But its price was to suppress the cornucopias of populist tradition, cut back on necessaries, and inculcate the discipline to satisfy wants in an orderly sequence (V. De Grazia, Irresistible Empire-America’s Advance through Twentieth-century Europe, pg.338)” De Grazia further speaks about a movie named ¡Bienvenido Mister Marshall! or Welcome Mr. Marshall! by Luis García Berlanga in 1953 that portrayed a village in Spain trying to attain aid from the United States. This village forces its people to improve its looks so that America would be more likely to help (pg.337). The movie is noted for how well it shows how it really was for European nations under the Marshall Plan-“of the fanciful expectations the Marshall Plan aroused that Europeans would soon enjoy American standards of living; of new alliances formed in the name of the consumer, dynamized by Cold War politics and smoothed by US economic and cultural capital; but also the travailed journey most people took over two decades from the ruins of the bourgeois regime of consumption to the jerry-built foundations of what in Europe too by 1960 was known as ‘the mass consumer society.’ (pg.337)” As far as Europe at the national level was concerned, the Marshall Plan was a godsend that provided much-needed materials needed to bring the allied nations back from the terrible war and into the second half of the Twentieth century, even building the foundations of the twenty-first. But for lower citizens, it was not always so cut and dry as some did not even see these materials, such as food, clothing, etc. until much later on.
As far as Europe at the national level was concerned, the Marshall Plan was a godsend that provided much-needed materials needed to bring the allied nations back from the terrible war and into the second half of the Twentieth century, even building the foundations of the twenty-first. But for lower citizens, it was not always so cut and dry as some did not even see these materials, such as food, clothing, etc. until much later on. So was the Marshall Plan a success? Yes, in that it rebuilt the infrastructure and economies of Europe. But it did so at the cost of the citizen’s ideas and rights to force it to happen.
When WWII ended the U.S. was one of the nations that came out on top. Europe however was left in a compromised position. So is it at all surprising that the Marshall Plan was used to spread American influence?
Christopher Jackson
This concept of ‘standard of living’ is an interesting one to dish out. Obviously, postwar Europe was in ruins. Did those European citizens just want to get back the lives, infrastructure, and economy they had before? Or did they really want to push forward to the American standard of living?
The context of the World War II helps set the stage for the Marshall Plan. The fact that Europe was in such disarray really allowed the US to sweep in and provide aid which swayed some over to the US economic/cultural system. The “french policy” shows how some of the major powers viewed US influence, and this has some merit in terms of how aid was meted out.