All of the above is true. I would add a couple more. America allowed very one sided trade deals. How many Fords or Chevys do you see on European roads? Why not? During the 1950s when the US was trying to get European economies back on their feet, we allowed them to protect their markets against American goods but simultaneously gave them unfettered access to our markets.
We didn’t do it out of charity. There was a real concern that they could have gone communist, even without the Red Army. The Communists were very popular in France and Italy, and they almost took over.
In Paris, right after liberation, the Communists seized control of the city, and were eliminating their opposition by accusing them all of being collaborators with the Nazis. DeGaulle came and put a stop to it, just in time.
Back in the day, growing up and living in a fairly European-descended suburb of Philadelphia and later NYC, I can tell you that some of the immigrants and 1st Gen Americans would tear up when PBS played the National Anthem before going off the air. It was not uncommon to find pictures of Jesus and FDR in close proximity to one another in their homes.
They were also very anti-Communist. Why? Because they or their parents or grandparents experienced the murder and mayhem of those regimes. Indeed, during my career I worked with people who lived under communism in Europe and had zero love for the “good old days.”
And yet, in isolated spots, they’d bad mouth America and Reagan and wax eloquently about communists. WHILE LIVING HERE!
I completely understand the one sided deals we gave them in the late 40s when their countries had been completely destroyed and US GDP was 50% of the entire world's GDP. We could afford it and it made perfect sense to stabilize the democracies we had just sacrificed the lives of 400,000 of our citizens to install. Plus we wanted to have real allies in case it came to another world war against the Commies. It was a very wise policy and one I wholeheartedly endorse.
Its just that it should have gradually ended by the mid 1960s to 1970 at the absolute latest. Nixon ended Breton Woods in 1972 because it was sucking gold out of our country and we just couldn't afford such largesse any longer. We went on allowing them to have very lopsided trade deals and subsidizing their defense for the next 50 years when in reality, those should have both been brought to an end.