“The Marshall Plan versus the Marshal Stalin Plan”: a cartoon drawn in 1949, in response to Stalin’s rejection of general George Marshall’s Plan, the post-war European Recovery Program.
“The Marshall Plan versus the Marshal Stalin Plan”: a cartoon drawn in 1949, in response to Stalin’s rejection of general George Marshall’s Plan, the post-war European Recovery Program.
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The Marshall Plan fascinates me. I once wrote a big paper about it for a history class, and I’m pretty well convinced that it may have been the greatest diplomatic triumph, certainly of the past couple hundred years, possibly ever. It’s one of those rare large-scale initiatives which successfully achieved everything it set out to do.
It simultaneously kickstarted the post-war recovery of Europe, oriented a number of countries which were teetering on the Cold War fence toward the Western sphere (notably Italy), boxed in the Soviets, and forced Stalin to have to resort to threats and violence to keep the Soviet satellites from breaking ranks and participating in the program, escalating resentment many of them were already feeling towards the USSR.
Really just a towering diplomatic success.