Unwrapping the Marshall Plan

Unwrapping the Marshall Plan

Paul Vincent, Professor Emeritus of Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Keene State College, will discuss the Marshall Plan, formally known as the European Recovery Program, a U.S.-led initiative enacted in 1948 that provided over $13.3 billion (roughly $150 billion in 2026 dollars) in economic aid to 16 Western European nations. What did the Marshall Plan do? What principal objectives led the United States to launch it? What were both its immediate and its long-term consequences? The Trump Administration’s newfound appreciation for regime change is an appropriate moment to reflect on past US interventions to rebuild societies and the unique conditions that made the Marshall Plan possible.

Paul Vincent taught history and Holocaust studies at Keene State College for 32 years, retiring in 2017. He is the author of two books: The Politics of Hunger: The Allied Blockade of Germany, 1915-1919 (1985) and A Historical Dictionary of Germany’s Weimar Republic, 1918-1933 (1997). He served as director of Keene State’s Mason Library and later of the Cohen Center for Holocaust Studies and coordinated establishment of the academic major in Holocaust and Genocide Studies. Vincent has also been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Holocaust Studies (part of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum), and a Fulbright Scholar and visiting professor at Jagiellonian University’s Centre for European Studies in Krakow, Poland. He received Keene State’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 2008.

The Windham World Affairs Council was founded in 1961 to bring the world to Windham County. It is the smallest of the World Affairs Councils of America and has an all-volunteer board. It hosts lectures, films, and other events on global topics, as well as a monthly Members’ Salon, where members and their guests gather informally to discuss topics of the day. For further information about future events, or if you would like to consider joining the board, visit https://windhamworldaffairscouncil.org/.  

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