What Was The Effects Of The Truman Doctrine

World War II was the largest conflict in human history and in the aftermath, Europe was devastated. During the war, most of the countries in Europe had spent exorbitant amounts of money and their gold reserves were incredibly depleted. In addition to this, many countries had taken out large loans to pay for the war. The United States had given the grand majority of these loans and became the largest creditor after the war. Great Britain, on the other had, had been the largest creditor before the war and over a period of just six years, had become the largest debtor. To pay off their debts, many countries printed money which led to hyperinflation skyrocketing and many types of currency became virtually worthless. After the war, most of the
In the beginning of 1948, George Marshall, the United States’ Secretary of State, played off the idea of the Truman Doctrine. The Truman Doctrine was conceptualized during the previous year by the President of the United States, Harry S. Truman, and from this idea, George Marshall created the Marshall Plan. This was a successful act that aided the war torn countries in Europe. The Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) was then created with the United States government to distribute the money. It was allocated to the 16 countries which were members who additionally had to decide how the money was distributed. By the end of the war, the United States had undergone the least structural damage out of the participating countries. This meant that they were fundamentally at the same point structurally as they had been before the war. They had no need for reparations, therefore they became the largest crediting country, and altruistically shelled out thirteen billion dollars to the nations of western
The leadership of the United States and Great Britain were concerned about the spread of Communism. This prompted them to form the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, otherwise known as NATO with ten other Western nations (History.com Staff, 2010). NATO was formed in 1949 with the purpose to prevent the further spread of communism and preserve democracy and capitalism. The members agreed to come to the aid of each other in the event of an attack or Soviet aggression. In response to this, the Soviet Union and other European communist nations formed the Warsaw Pact(The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2018). It had the same pretense of NATO, if one country was attacked, the others would come to their aid. The creation of these two alliances effectively politically divided Europe on to two sides which created the beginning of a military standoff which lasted for the duration of the Cold