The United States and Europe were a study in contrasts at the end of World War II. U.S. geographic isolation allowed it to escape relatively unscathed, while much of Europe had heavy industry bombed out, fields burned, and economies devastated. Worse still for Europe, the tide of Communism was approaching their shores. If they could not recover quickly enough, President Harry Truman realized, Europe would fall to the Communists.

On this day, April 3, in 1948, President Truman signed the European Recovery Plan, colloquially known as the “Marshall Plan” for its architect, Secretary of State George Marshall. Although meant as a bulwark against Communism, Truman did offer Russia the same aid under the auspices of the Marshall Plan, but Stalin refused.

Around $13 billion of aid was eventually transferred to Europe between 1948 and 1951. There was no better man to administer it than George Marshall, the man who in his 1947 commencement address called for just such a system. “It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace,” he said to the Harvard graduating class. “Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos.”