MAPS OF HISTORY · ON THIS DAY · February 25 · 1948
ON THIS DAY · 25 FEBRUARY 1948
The Prague coup
25 Feb 1948 — Czechoslovakia, the last democracy east of the curtain, falls to a communist coup without a shot. Western resistance to Stalin hardens overnight.
THE MOMENT IN CONTEXT
In February 1947, bankrupt Britain hands Washington a letter: it can no longer fund the Greek government’s civil war against communist partisans, or prop up Turkey. Truman’s answer generalizes the moment into a doctrine — support for “free peoples resisting subjugation” — and $400 million flows to Athens and Ankara. Then comes the masterstroke: the Marshall Plan, $13.3 billion (roughly 5% of one year’s US GDP) to rebuild all of Europe, enemies included. Look at the map’s logic: containment’s first weapons are money and wheat, not divisions.
From Chapter 2 — Containment of The Cold War, 1945–1991 (MAY 1949).
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TEACH THIS IN 5 MINUTES
- Why it happened — Europe was starving, and hunger votes. The brutal winter of 1946–47 froze canals, halved German rations and pushed French and Italian communist parties — already a quarter of the vote —…
- The turn — Berlin, 24 June 1948 — the gates close. Stalin’s best chance to stop a West German state without war becomes the event that guarantees one. The airlift turns Berliners from defeated…
- What it changed — NATO: the entangling alliance at last. On 4 April 1949 twelve nations sign the North Atlantic Treaty — the United States’ first peacetime European alliance since 1778. Article 5’s “an…
Then ask the room: The Marshall Plan is often called the most successful foreign policy in American history. What exactly did it buy — and what did it cost? The argued answer is on the chapter page →
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