The Marshall Plan - officially called European Recovery Program, ERP - was an initiative of the United States to help Western Europe, in which the Americans gave economic aid worth about 13 billion dollars at the time for the reconstruction of those countries of Europe devastated after the Second World War. The plan was in operation for four years since 1948. The objectives of the United States were to rebuild those areas destroyed by the war, eliminate barriers to trade, modernize European industry and make the continent prosperous again; all these objectives were intended to prevent the spread of communism, which had a large and growing influence in post-war Europe.
