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USA policy of containment

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Was the US policy of ‘Containment’ a success or a failure?

It was in a speech made by the 33rd President of the United States of America, Harry Truman in which he announced a policy that would undoubtedly shape the way his nation would be looked at for much of the century (or at least the half of it that remained). It was in this speech that he announced his very own Doctrine, intended to "to support free people who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”, to save the “free peoples” of Eastern Europe from the monster known as Communism, a political ideology born out of the Russian Revolution of 1917, that had spread somewhat like a plague, throughout the lands in the East, which Stalin and …show more content…

Initially, American leaders were unsure about how exactly containment would be implemented. Would it be applied everywhere? Would it involve economic aid to help nations reconstruct their economies? Would it involve military confrontation? The answer was to come soon.

In June 1947, the United States announced the Marshall Plan, intended to help economic recovery in Europe and thus prevent the spread of Communism in a Europe that was increasingly becoming “a breeding ground of hate”, thus providing a comforting environment for the rise of the Marxist ideology. At first, the Marshall Plan seemed to be a success, with economic aid worth $17 billion being made available to Europe and ensuring the protection of democratic governments in Turkey and Greece. Marshall Aid did help economic recovery in Europe, erasing unemployment and improving living standards greatly. Most Western European nations were happy to accept American aid in order to redevelop their economies. However, Stalin forbade any Eastern European countries from accepting the Plan and setup organizations like the Cominform and Comecon instead, to further tighten Stalin’s grip over Eastern Europe.

One of containment’s major aims was also to ensure that West Germany and West Berlin could get its economy back on track to prevent the infiltration of Communism from East Germany, controlled by the Soviets. In 1946, the Allied zones of Germany were combined

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