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Notes on video lecture:
The Two Europes That Emerged After WWII
Notes taken by Edward Tanguay on May 16, 2014 (go to class or lectures)
Choose from these words to fill the blanks below:
Czechoslovakia, bridging, cotton, Monnet, hard, purchasing, contain, hub, height, congress, cartoon, future, galvanizing, shopping, afford, helpless, knock, walls, rivalries, unions, popular, revival, 1947, military, free, contradictions, Acheson, backfired, wrong, communist, grip, confidence, subverted, Gaulists, Truman, generous, American
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Marshall Plan
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the name was deliberate because George Marshall was considerably more                than Harry Truman
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would raise the odds of getting it through                 
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but it was a team effort:
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Dean               
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played key role
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stressed anti-                   message to congress
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advocate of          trade
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George Kennan
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               Soviet communism and it will "expire of its own                             "
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no                  confrontation
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an economic                in Western Europe was necessary
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Will Clayton
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major role in shaping the Marshall Plan in         
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economic adviser to              at the Potsdam Conference
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-In 1948, he returned to his private business in Houston, but remained active in efforts to promote free trade
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came from Texas, dealt in             , advocate of free trade
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one reason why Europeans couldn't buy products from America is they didn't have          currency
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we have this image of the Marshall Plan as a foreign aid effort, we were very                  and we gave the Europeans tons of money. That's a kind of good                story of the Marshall Plan, but you can't learn anything from it. It misses what really made the Marshall Plan work:
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1. the Marshall Plan encouraged the Europeans to "create a                  list", tell us what you would buy if you had a lot of dollars
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then the American government would be their                      agent, "we'll go buy it"
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of course, the American government will buy it from                  companies
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the Europeans like it because they get massive amounts of money to make purchases from the United States which they otherwise would not be able to             
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2. Europeans had to agree that they would            down the trade barriers within Europe
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America said: "We're not going to deal with eight European countries, each with it's own trade           "
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then you can participate together and create your shopping list for us
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3. prewar political                    have to be downplayed and muted
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communist point of view
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everything about the Marshall plan is           , since the Americans are the       , not the Soviets
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cooperative elements imply free trade, incompatible with communist economic ideology
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implementation of the Marshall Plan
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1947, 48, and into the 50s
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effects
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psychological
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gave people                      that "the glass was filling instead of draining"
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gave them political and economic confidence about the             
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vision for Europe
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created a vision for Western Europe as a cooperative entity combining its resources
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French political polls
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no right wing, monarchical voting, although a few                  but not very strong
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communists at their             , made up majority with democratic socialists, and social democrats
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1947 Communists launch a general strike, and are pushed out of power
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social democrats:
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big government, big companies, big             , free market with a strong government role, a lot of institution building
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sometimes called Christian Democrats
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become the key centrist force
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Jean              and Robert Schumann
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cooperated, and are committed to                  Western European countries and getting them to work together
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Eastern Europe
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Soviet Union increasingly tightenting its         
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a tragic story for the fate of Eastern Europe
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                   democratic forces
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made sure that they and their allies seize power
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West was                  to intervene
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created flashpoints
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was a shock since the whole cause of Czechoslovakia was still fresh in minds from WWII
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divided Germany and divided Berlin
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1948: Soviets cut Berlin off, forcing Berlin to be kept afloat
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this                    and created iconic images of the West going to great lengths to provide for Berlin
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images like the American plane landing in Berlin to feed children had a                        effect on Europe and clarified the nature of the two Europes that were coming into existence

People:

######################### (1886-1963)
A founder of the European Union, twice Prime Minister of France, Minister of Finance and Foreign Minister
  • arrested by Nazis, saved by lawyer from being sent to Dachau
  • joined French Resistance
  • always argued that European reconciliation that must take place after the end of hostilities
######################### (1888-1979)
French political economist and diplomat, regarded as a chief architect of European unity
  • never elected to public office
  • a well-connected pragmatic internationalist
######################### (1893-1971)
Secretary of State in Truman administration, helped design the Marshall Plan
  • helped develop Truman Doctrine (support Greece and Turkey) and NATO
  • convinced Truman to intervene in Korean War in June 1950
######################### (1904-2005)
American political scientists, the "father of containment"
  • his writing inspired the Truman Doctrine
  • leading authority of the Cold War

Flashcards:

three people who helped create the Marshall plan
Dean Acheson, George Kennan, Will Clayton

Ideas and Concepts:

Three reasons the Marshall Plan worked, via tonight's History Since 1760 class: "We have this image of the Marshall Plan as a foreign aid effort in which "America was very generous and gave the Europeans tons of money". That's a kind of good cartoon story of the Marshall Plan, but you can't learn anything from it. It misses what really made the Marshall Plan work. The reasons the Marshall Plan worked was:1. America told Europe to "create a shopping list of everything you would buy if you had the dollars to do it". Then the American government became Europe's purchasing agent, and subsequently purchased the goods and services from, of course, American companies. Europeans loved this since it gave them the buying power which they otherwise wouldn't have had, and American companies loved this because it gave them a large customer base with buying power. 2. America told Europe "We're not going to deal with eight different European countries each with its own trade walls" and set up stipulations that would knock down trade barriers within Western Europe enforcing free trade throughout all of its countries. 3. America encouraged a strong European effort to downplay and mute prewar political rivalries between European countries. If the Marshall Plan was going to work, Western Europe had to act as one."
1914: Schizophrenic Germany
1914: The Balkan Whirlpool
1914: From Balkan Crisis to War
1914-1916: All War Plans Fail Horribly
The 1916 Missed Opportunity for Peace
WWI Pushes Warring Countries Toward Total States
Why the Allies Won World War One
Post-WWI: Filling the Void of Collapsed Empires
Post-WWI Communism vs. Anti-Communism
Post World War I: The Age of Uncertainty
1910s/1920s: Modern Women
The World of 1930
The 1930s World Crisis
1930s: The Decade of Contingency
America's Entry into World War II
WWII: Strategies for Total War
1945: Hour Zero
Post WWII: Imagining New Countries
Conflicts in Postwar Nation Building
The Two Europes That Emerged After WWII
1947 China: Undesirable Communists vs. Flawed Nationalists
Post WWII: The Age of America
Reasons for the Korean War
How WWIII was Avoided in the Korean War
1950-1952: The Cold War Comes to Main Street
1950-1954: The H-Bomb and the Nuclear Revolution
1950s: Loosening Empires and Building Confederations
The Emergence of the Third World
1958-1962: The World at the Brink
Third World Proxy Wars of the 1950s and 1960s
Managerial States and the Transnational Disruption of 1968
1970s Obstacles to Reducing Cold War Tensions
1970s Democratic Socialism Becomes a Non-Choice
1980s Political Polarization
1980s: Global Capitalism Transformed