The European Recovery Program, announced by US Secretary of State George Marshall in 1947 and running from 1948 to 1952, channelled some thirteen billion dollars of American aid into the reconstruction of Western Europe after the Second World War. The funds rebuilt ports, railways, power systems, factories and housing, and tied recovery to trade liberalisation and economic cooperation among recipients. The aid helped finance the rebuilding of bombed cities and the modernisation of industry across the continent. It also bound Western Europe to the United States during the early Cold War and was pointedly refused by the Soviet bloc.
It financed the physical reconstruction of war-damaged European cities and infrastructure, and showed how large-scale external aid could be used to rebuild and politically align an entire region.
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