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Officially known as the European Recovery Program (ERP), the Marshall Plan was a large-scale economic program to rebuild and create a stronger economic foundation for the countries of Europe. It was named after Secretary of State George Marshall. The plan was in operation for four years beginning in April 1948. During that time, $13 billion in economic and technical assistance was given to help the recovery of the European countries that had joined in the Organization for European Economic Co-operation. This $13 billion was in addition to another $12 billion in American aid to Europe between the end of the war and the start of the Plan.
By 1952 as the funding ended, the economy of every participant state had surpassed pre-war levels; for all Marshall Plan recipients, output in 1951 was 35% higher than in 1938. Over the next two decades, Western Europe enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity. One economist, Belgian Herman Van der Wee wrote of the Marshall Plan: "It gave a new impetus to reconstruction in Western Europe and made a decisive contribution to the renewal of the transport system, the modernization of industrial and agricultural equipment, the resumption of normal production, the raising of productivity, and the facilitating of intra-European trade."
