Marshall Plan Document 23

When World War II ended in May 1945, Europe was in ruins. Once-fertile fields were scarred by bomb craters and tank tracks. In cities, seas of rubble--an estimated 500 million cubic tons of it in Germany alone--surrounded abandoned, gutted buildings. With factories and businesses destroyed, many people were unemployed. Food was so scarce that millions were on the verge of starvation.

These photographs of Stuttgart, Germany, taken only eight years apart, demonstrate the destruction that existed throughout Europe at the end of the war and how Marshall Plan aid promoted rapid rebuilding. They appear in a booklet intended to inform the American public of Germany's gratitude for U.S. aid and the German government's decision to establish a fund as a memorial to the Marshall Plan, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the plan.