November 15, 2018
If you want to ensure you’re never so naive as to call for another Marshall Plan, read this book. Benn Steil’s exhaustive narrative about the massive and complicated U.S. effort to aid Europe after World War II makes it clear that a similar initiative is not likely ever to be implemented — even if the United States is someday governed again by a president who sees America’s core interests as connected to others we might want to help.
Drawing extensively on U.S. archival material as well as some Russian, British, French, German, Serbian and Czech sources, Steil tells the story of not just the development of the Marshall Plan but also the division of Germany, the founding of NATO and, as the subtitle of his book indicates, the dawn of the Cold War. Steil’s account is the most detailed yet of the lengthy, constantly evolving initiative, named after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, who guided the planning of the enormous effort to help Europeans recover from the war’s devastation. He argues that the main success of the Marshall Plan was the psychological boost it gave to Western Europeans, but the chief drawback was that it essentially marked the start of the Cold War.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/why-the-marshall-plan-spooked-the-soviets-and-sparked-the-cold-war/2018/02/23/fdeae418-0a85-11e8-8890-372e2047c935_story.html?noredirect=on&utm_term=.9d8565185128
https://www.usatoday.com/story/life/books/2018/02/20/excellent-book-tells-story-marshall-plan-which-rebuilt-europe-launched-cold-war/355129002/
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35297577-the-marshall-plan