History IA – Section A

Research Question: To what extent was the Marshall Plan successful?

My first two sources come from a working paper, known as The Marshall Plan: History’s Most
Successful Structural Adjustment Program, by De Long J. Bradford and Eichengreen Barry, which
will give me a more detailed account about the Marshall Plan’s success. My last source comes
from a textbook, known as The Marshall Plan Lessons Learnt for the 21 st Century, by Eliot Sorel
and Pier Carlo Padoan. The source from this book gives me the strengths and the weaknesses of
the Marshall Plan.

Source 1

The first source was written by J. Bradford and Barry Eichengreen who wrote the source by
looking at the economic side of the Marshall Plan. The source was published in 1991 which
suggests that they were able to look at the effects of the Marshall Plan years after it was
launched. However, while they were able to look at the effects of the Marshall Plan, they
weren’t able to give a first hand view on the effects of the Marshall Plan as they were there
when it was launched. As economists, they were able to accurately analyse how much of an
impact the Marshall Plan had, however, this proves to be of no use to a historian as it consists
only of graphs but no evaluation on them.
The source was produced to give an accurate account of the impact the plan had on the world
economy, however, it is limited to that – it doesn’t give any other information other than that.

The graphs in the source show the economic impact the plan had on the countries most
affected by the war and the conditions afterwards. The graphs project economic growth over a
time period of 100 years. The source also shows a massive hike in the Log of GDP Per Capita
during and after 1945.

Source 2

This source is also published by J. Bradford and Barry Eichengreen and this source was also
published in 1991 which means that they were able to analyse the economic impacts all on the
countries, that were involved during World War 1, and how their GDP increased from an
economic point of view, as they were members of the Department of Economics. However,
being economists, they are unable to present more information next to the graph that would
be useful and reliable for a historian.

This source was produced to give historians an idea of the GDP impact most countries had after
the implementation of the Marshall Plan. However, it doesn’t give much of an overview or a
description which means that it will be hard for a historian to decipher what the conditions of
the countries were at the time.

The source is useful because, unlike source 1, it is not limited to certain countries, but gives an
account of the economic growth for multiple countries and how much the Marshall Plan helped
them. However, the source is not very description which makes the source useful but only to a
certain extent.

Source 3

This source is published from a textbook written by Eliot Sorel and Pier Carlo Padoan. Since the
source was published in a textbook, it is very informative and descriptive about the events that
took place during the time of when the Marshall Plan was launched. However, this textbook
was published through the George C. Marshall Foundation which suggests that since it is
written from an American perspective, it may contain a little bit of bias.

The purpose of this source is to give a detailed account of the strengths and the weaknesses of
the Marshall Plan, which it does so pretty well. The source will give a historian the information
needed to know what effect the Marshall Plan on specific countries. However, while being
specific may be good, in this case, it becomes too narrow and fails to examine other countries
and what impact they had on the Marshall Plan’s success.
The source is mainly about determining the strengths and weaknesses of the Marshall Plan and
it does this through the analysis of countries like France, Greece and Italy. The source also gives
useful time periods which narrows the timeline a historian will have to look at to get a further
in-depth description about the strengths and weaknesses of the plan. However, the source only
looks at countries the Marshall Plan was initially for (the Marshall Plan was initially made to
help countries like France, Greece and Italy to aid them from getting under control by the
Soviets to keep communism ‘contained’). The source doesn’t look at the other countries to
whom the Marshall Plan was offered as they may also have a major impact in terms of
determining the strengths and weaknesses of the Marshall Plan.