The "Marshall Plan" (European Recovery Program: ERP) aimed at encouraging the reconstruction of Europe, which because of the war, was in disastrous economic conditions. The Marshall Plan has taken its name from the American Secretary of State who offered, in a famous talk of the 5 June 1947, “an essential program of assistances which allowed them ( European NDR ) to get through a situation of economic and politics crisis” and reinstated “their trust in the economic future of the respective countries of Europe in its whole”. The soviet rejected the Marshall Plan for fear that it was an American attempt of keeping the control on Europe and forced the satellite country (oriental Europe) to align themselves with their ideas; while in Italy the Marshall Plan was received with joy and the Italian government stipulated with the Americans (2 February 1948) a treaty of friendship, commerce and navigation.

The European Recovery Program (ERP), which was preceded until 1946 by UNNRA (United Nations Relief And Rehabilitations Administrations), consisted in the end in a budget of more than 13 billion dollars for a period of four years, of these, almost 11% come to Italy, that not received only loans but, in the major part, about 88%, free help. According to an estimate it was 3,695 million dollars that arrived to the Italians in form of raw material, food and machinery.