Look up your history. The U.S. (and U.K.) were planning to be at least as punitive as 1919, if not more. It was only as the Cold War dawned that that changed.
“Look up your history. The U.S. (and U.K.) were planning to be at least as punitive as 1919, if not more. It was only as the Cold War dawned that that changed.”
I’m thinking that maybe you need to take that “look up history” advice. Your record of accuracy seems to be a bit below par.
https://providencemag.com/2023/04/the-marshall-plan-at-75-an-act-to-promote-world-peace/
April 3rd, 2023 marks the 75th anniversary of Congress passing the European Recovery Act, better known as the Marshall Plan after U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall. The passing of this huge foreign aid bill, in tandem with the establishment of NATO and the Truman Doctrine’s emphasis on containment, laid the foundation for U.S. foreign policy in the decades ahead and, ultimately, victory in the Cold War.
The best way to summarize what the European Recovery Act’s program (European Recovery Program or ERP) sought to achieve is by looking at the Act’s official title:
An Act to promote world peace and the general welfare, national interest, and foreign policy of the United States through economic, financial, and other measures necessary to the maintenance of conditions abroad in which free institutions may survive and consistent with the maintenance and stability of the United States.
“An Act to promote world peace …” Many believed that the dire conditions in Europe at the end of the First World War directly contributed to the rise of aggressive fascism in Italy and Germany and that weak institutions allowed Japan’s military to run rampant in the Far East. Unlike the vision of Wilson’s 14 Points, which called for dramatic democratic change but was accompanied by a series of Versailles-like treaties that pummeled the losers, the Marshall Plan was designed to provide aid to former friends and foes alike – even the Soviet Union was offered aid. The U.S. position was that hungry people and derelict industries were a recipe for revolution, famine, and aggression.
The ERP recognized that world peace was tied up with events in Europe and that European instability had a way of destabilizing global affairs. The Act’s title tells us very clearly that peace was in the “general welfare, national interest, and foreign policy” objectives of America. It was in the U.S. interest to avoid seeing Communism take over Germany and other major industrial powers, as Hitler and Mussolini had after World War I. It was in the U.S. interest for Europeans to not only feed but also defend themselves. Moreover, it was in the U.S. interest to revitalize global trade, reopening markets for U.S. goods. Just as Europe’s depression of the 1920s was in part responsible for the Crash of 1929, the U.S. must avoid a repeat of those conditions twenty years later.