The Scale and Impact of the Marshall Plan

Abstract

One of the abiding debates over the Marshall Plan has been the extent to which it allowed the US to determine European policies, both economic and political. Not only is Marshall Aid seen as helping to provide the basis for a new postwar international economic order, but also as actively limiting and affecting policy options for the recipient states. In order to assess the impact of the programme and the amount of leverage that this gave the US over the recipients, it is necessary to examine the scale of Marshall Aid, the form that the aid took and the specific aims of the Marshall Plan. In Britain, because of the specific form of the aid, the power of the US was minimized.