You are right, but that was how the Marshall Plan was advertised. Marshall went all over the country to tell people that this wasn't just another lend-lease, it was a sound investment. It wasn't just considered humanitarian releif, it was relief AND recovery. Recovery, so the U.S. could reestablish its exports in Western Europe.

The mythology is that the Marshall Plan was executed by the United States out of the goodness of it's heart. The reality is that we cut off Lend-Lease at the very earliest possible moment, we plotted all through the WW2 to break up the British trading zone that was their remnant for colonialism, and it was while they were being bombarded by German6y that we were finally able to blackmail them to do this (read the story of Keynes during WW2), and the fact is that it was banker Thomas Lamont among other businessmen that forced the Truman administration to open up and save Europe's shattered economies so that US companies would be able to continue doing business with them.

Follow the money, not sappy platitudes.

But I'm not hearing Americans say, "We bailed Europe out after WW II." I'm hearing them say, "We bailed them out *in* WW II." I'm not sure people are open to implementing a similar idea today.

I've heard that Germany has an account held to pay back it's Marshall plan money (if they were ever asked to pay back.) was this money paid back by other countries? why don't we ask for repayment now so we can pay off our national debt or build some schools so we can compete better against the EU, China & India?

I'm not an expert in the Marshall Plan, but from little I know about it, I am puzzled by the fact that it didn't start for several years after the war ended and Europe was already pulling itself up by its own bootstraps. How much did it really help, or was it just a marginal push in the right direction?