Marshall Plan Dbq

1053 Words5 Pages

I believe that these two sources are very useful to a historian studying the Marshall Plan, as they clearly demonstrate the distinctive differences between the Soviet response and the American response to the Marshall Plan and the motivation behind it, and therefore help a historian to understand why it was so controversial and caused a lot of tension between the two superpowers. Source A presents the Orthodox view toward the Marshall Plan, from George Marshall the creator himself. This source is very useful to a historian, it tells us that the USA clearly felt that it was necessary for them to launch the Marshall Plan to help Europe recover from the war as this would be beneficial to the USA, after William Clayton returned from a fact-finding …show more content…

This source is very useful to a historian, it explains the Soviet response to the Marshall Plan, and they believed it was a clear example of American economic imperialism. They believed the Americans were trying to undermine the Soviet sphere of influence in Europe by taking over countries and making them dependant on the US dollar so that they could not turn to communism, if they did they would face the risk of having their aid stopped. From my own knowledge, I know that one condition of receiving the aid was that countries would have to share their economic information with the USA. The soviets believed that the Marshall Plan was an attempt to place countries under their economic and political control, as demonstrated by the fact they had to share economic information. The plan was perceived as having ideological reasons and the USA were trying to control countries by making them reliant on the dollar and through fear of this money being taken away if they turned to Communism, undermining and posing a clear threat to Soviet influence in eastern …show more content…

Source A presents the American response to the Marshall Plan, including the motivation for its creation being to revive a working economy in the world to prevent chaos, loss of peace and an unbalanced economy. Source B then presents the Soviet response to the Marshall Plan, suggesting that it was a clear threat to its influence in Eastern Europe and it was an attempt to spread their economic and political control. Clearly the superpowers had totally different responses to the creation of the Marshall Plan, and the sources express these responses from both sides in great

More about Marshall Plan Dbq

Open Document