President Truman launches the Marshall Plan. US President Harry S. Truman signs the Foreign Assistance Act, the program better known as the Marshall Plan, named after US Secretary of State George C. Marshall, which channeled more than $13 billion in economic aid to Europe between 1948 and 1951. Intended to promote the economic recovery of European countries devastated by World War II, the plan also helped save the United States from postwar recession by creating a new market for American products. The USSR barred Poland and Czechoslovakia from participating in the plan. The separation between Eastern and Western Europe thus deepened, leading to the lifting of the Iron Curtain.
