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Document for June 5th:
"West Berlin, Germany. Marshall Plan aid to Germany totaled $1,390,600 and enabled that country to rise from the ashes of defeat, as symbolized by this worker in West Berlin..."

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"West Berlin, Germany. Marshall Plan aid to Germany totaled $1,390,600 and enabled that country to rise from the ashes of defeat, as symbolized by this worker in West Berlin..."

"West Berlin, Germany. Marshall Plan aid to Germany totaled $1,390,600 and enabled that country to rise from the ashes of defeat, as symbolized by this worker in West Berlin. Even a year before the end of the Marshall Plan in 1951, Germany had surpassed her prewar industrial production level." ca. 1948 - ca. 1955 (NWDNS-286-ME-6(2), National Archives Identifier: 541691); Photographs of Marshall Plan Activities in Europe and Africa, ca. 1948 - ca. 1989; Records of the Agency of International Development [AID]; Record Group 286; National Archives.

When World War II ended in 1945, Europe lay in ruins: its cities were shattered; its economies were devastated; its people faced famine. In the two years after the war, the Soviet Union’s control of Eastern Europe and the vulnerability of Western European countries to Soviet expansionism heightened the sense of crisis. To meet this emergency, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed in a speech at Harvard University on June 5, 1947, that European nations create a plan for their economic reconstruction and that the United States provide economic assistance. On December 19, 1947, President Harry Truman sent Congress a message that followed Marshall’s ideas to provide economic aid to Europe. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948, and on April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the act that became known as the Marshall Plan.
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