The Marshall Plan – At the Dawn of the Cold War

"The Marshall Plan" is a pertinent and remarkably well-written work of diplomatic and economic history.

Leaders and experts from around the world keep calling for a new "Marshall Plan", but how many truly understand what that plan was about, how it was created and how it was carried out? This book will open eyes and minds".

Alan Greenspan, former Chairman of the Federal Reserve. In the aftermath of the Second World War, as the British Empire crumbled and nothing slowed Stalin's expansion, the team of new Secretary of State George C. Marshall planned the reconstruction of Western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. This massive, ambitious and costly undertaking confronted both Europeans and Americans with a vision at odds with their history and their personal convictions. In its momentum, it led to the creation of NATO, the European Union and the Western identity as they still shape international relations today.

In this gripping essay, Benn Steil focuses on the critical years from 1947 to 1949 and brings back to life the key episodes that marked, in post-war Europe, the deterioration of American-Soviet relations: the Prague coup, the Berlin Blockade and the partition of Germany.

Each time, we are given the opportunity to observe and understand Stalin's determination to destroy the Marshall Plan and undermine American influence in Europe. Drawing on new American, Russian, German and other European archival sources, Benn Steil delivers a lucid history of the Marshall Plan. He permanently changes the way we perceive the plan, the emergence of the Cold War and the post-Cold War era, during which the future of Europe and the entanglement of the United States within it are once again at stake.