A netfull of fish is emptied onto the boat deck. The Marshall Plan has helped repair the ruined docks and wharves of Ostende, one of Belgium’s principal fishing ports. Though the aid was open to all European countries, Stalin ordered those under his Eastern Bloc to reject American aid, and created a Soviet plan as a response to the Marshall Plan. Unsurprisingly, Stalin was extremely skeptical of the plan and believed it would create an anti-Soviet bloc. Once talks began to put the plan in place, all of the Allies, including the Soviet Union, in an effort to gain Stalin’s trust, were invited to a meeting in Paris to negotiate the terms of American aid in Europe. He believed that economic stability was key to political stability, and crushing Soviet influence, in Europe.

It was an economic and social reconstruction plan for Europe designed to speed up recovery in the countries still suffering the effects of WWII. The plan is named after Secretary of State George Marshall, who presented the theory behind the plan in a commencement address at Harvard in 1947. The Marshall Plan (or the European Recovery Program) was a direct consequence of Containment policy. In this section, learn more about how the West and East confronted each other throughout the Cold War.

Instead, a cold war plays out through competing economic systems, military alliances as well as arms building and the accumulation of other resources, and sometimes through proxy or surrogate wars. The Cold War Part 2 The Cold War / Part 2Ī “cold” war, as opposed to a “hot” war, is one that does not involve direct military confrontation.

Why was the war called the cold war