Truman always described Marshall Aid and the Truman Doctrine as "Two haIves of the same walnut". What do you think he meant by this?
1 Answer
They were two policies which served a common aim, namely the containment of communism in the post war world.
Explanation:
The Marshall Plan was designed to rejuvenate the economies of Europe after the devastation caused by World War 2. It was confined to the Western half as Stalin rejected it for the Soviet satellite states of the East.
It was designed to create not only economic but also social and political stability. The view was that unless such stability was established then countries such as France and Italy who had large communist parties and were active in opposing fascism after 1941 , would be at risk of becoming communist.
The Truman Doctrine was a political commitment to give US internal and external aid to any country threatened by dictatorship (namely communism). It was specifically linked to a threatened communist takeover in Greece.
Therefore both the Marshall Plan and The Truman Doctrine reflected the post war US foreign policy of containment.
