The European Recovery Programme, announced by US Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947 and running from 1948, channelled some thirteen billion dollars in American aid into the reconstruction of war-damaged western Europe. The funds financed rebuilding of industry, transport and housing and were tied to economic cooperation among recipient states. The programme is widely credited with accelerating recovery and binding western Europe to the United States during the early Cold War. Eastern bloc states declined to participate.
It underwrote the postwar reconstruction of European cities and helped finance the welfare-state housing and infrastructure programmes that defined mid-century urbanism.
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