Answer to Question #273428 in History for Jack2

Question

1.Following the devastation of WWII and attempting to learn from the lessons of WWI the world took measures to begin to rebuild. We saw that plan to rebuild from George C. Marshall with The Marshall Plan in 1948. How did you regard Marshall’s speech in laying the groundwork for what would eventually be the Marshall Plan? Which parts of rebuilding Europe as Marshall seemed most necessary and why? Which arguments were most persuasive? What similarities and differences did you find between Marshall’s version of economic recovery and the ideas laid out by Keynes after WWI?

2.In the Brezhnev Doctrine, how does Brezhnev respond to the events in Czechoslovakia (the Prague Spring)? Where do you see Brezhnev pitting sides against each other, and how is it representative of the Cold War as a whole? How do you understand this speech in tandem with Khrushchev’s Secret Speech only 12 years later? What changes that came under Khrushchev may have remained under Brezhnev, and which ones appear to have been rolled back?

Answer 1

1. British economist John Maynard Keynes, like George C. Marshall, was a leader in the economic revolution that overturned the prevailing belief that free markets would automatically provide full employment—that is, that everyone who wanted a job would get one as long as workers were willing to be flexible in their wage demands.
2. It stated that the Soviet Union had the right to employ armed force in neighboring socialist countries to uphold the Communist Party's tight rule. The Brezhnev Doctrine was used to justify the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1968, following the introduction of democratic reforms by Alexander Dubek.