What is Marshall Plan?
[[Image:Marshall Plan.png|right|thumb|300px|Map of Cold-War era Europe and the Near East showing countries that received Marshall Plan aid. The red columns show the amount of total aid per country]] The '''Marshall Plan''' (officially called the '''European Recovery Program''' [ERP]) was a plan of the [[United States]] for rebuilding the allied countries of [[Europe]] after [[World War II]]. One of the main reasons this was done was to stop [[communism]] and the [[USSR]]. The plan was named after [[United States Secretary of State|Secretary of State]] [[George Marshall]], but the plan was worked out by other people in the State Department. The plan ran for four years beginning in April 1948. During that period [[US$]] 13 billion in economic and technical help were given to help the recovery of the European countries that had joined in the [[Organization for European Economic Co-operation]].<ref>The $13 billion compares to the U.S. [[gross domestic product]] of $41 billion in 1949.</ref> By the time the plan ended, the [[Economic system|economy]] of every member state had grown well past pre-war levels. In recent years some historians have said that another reason for the plan was to make the United States stronger, and to make the countries of western Europe need the United States. They also say that the [[United Nations]] (UN) [[United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration|Relief and Rehabilitation Administration]], which helped millions of refugees from 1944 to 1947, it also helped the European postwar recovery. ==Alternatives to the Marshall Plan== [[Image:Royal Air Force Bomber Command, 1942-1945. CL3400.jpg|thumb|300px|Burned-out buildings after the [[Bombing of Hamburg in World War II|bombing of Hamburg]]]] ===Morgenthau plan=== U.S. Treasury Secretary [[:en:Henry Morgenthau Jr.|Henry Morgenthau, Jr.]] said that if Europe needed money to rebuild what had been destroyed by the war, they should take it from Germany. This money was called [[war reparations]]. Morgenthau said it would also stop