ABSTRACT
Western Europe’s recovery after 1945 was robust. Economic recovery,which required the restoration of severely damaged but essentially sound and skilled economies, was powerfully engendered through American financial aid, which was itself impelled both by generosity and by fears of the collapse of countries of vital concern to the United States in the Cold War. The Marshall Plan (1947) was, with the North Atlantic Treaty (1949), a crucial factor in the tempo of western Europe’s material repair and spiritual reassurance.
