Bob Stradling

Using Multiperspectivity
In European history very few accounts of significant events and developments are wholly right or wholly wrong. This often leads to a multitude of perspectives on the same events, each of which can help us to understand what happened and why. It is for this reason that multiperspectivity, if used well, can be a real benefit to students and their teachers. Multiperspectivity allows us to present history in a more rounded and balanced way than the traditional grand narrative. It encourages us to focus on how the key actors at a particular time in history, the eye witnesses, the ordinary people involved, the journalists and the historians used the evidence available to them to construct their own interpretations of events which, when taken together, can also help us to form our historical interpretation as well.

Using Multiperspectivity
The following screens provide a case study of how multiperspectivity can benefit the teaching and learning of history. Using the Economic Recovery Plan (usually referred to as the Marshall Plan) as an example we will view how a range of sources from different countries and groups can be brought together to forge an understanding of a subject from multiple perspectives and viewpoints.

Illingworth cartoon detailing how the Marshall Plan was received both positively and negatively in Europe, June 1947

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

This American poster was published to promote the Marshall Plan

This cartoon, from the Soviet paper Izvestiya (Nov. 3, 1949), shows Paul Hoffman, head of the Economic Cooperation Administration, attacking the sovereignty as well as the tariff barriers of Marshall Plan countries with a club of dollars.

Examples of material to be found on Historiana

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

You can listen to George C. Marshalls famous speech

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

Harry S. Truman, the American president

it will be necessary to reestablish economic balance before political balance can be reestablished

Harry S. Truman

You can read primary documents from those who played a major role to find out why it was implemented

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

The French socialist newspaper LAction

Western Europe [will] be reduced to being a semi-American colony and drawn into an aggressive war against the USSR.
Maurice Thorez - leader of the French Communists

And contrast this with other perspectives

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary:

[the Marshall Plan is] the quickest way to break down the iron curtain.
Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary

Read transcripts and hear quotes by leaders and their supporters from different countries

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

Thorkil Kristensen, Minister of Finance, Denmark, 1945-47, talking in 1964:

Denmark had not been frightfully much hurt directly by the war. But all our main markets were European countries and therefore, a general reconstruction of Europe was important for Danish export and also for Danish reconstruction.
Thorkil Kristensen

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

The French Communist newspaper, LHumanite:

after disorganising the national economies of the countries which are under the American yoke, American leaders now intend conclusively to subjugate the economy of these countries to their own interests.

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

John S. Pesmazoglu, Director General, Ministry of Coordination in Charge of Planning Economic Development, Greece, 1951-55:

John S. Pesmazoglu

Aid to Greece was not put immediately and in substantial amounts to the reconstruction of the country. The major part of it went to military support.

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

In the Netherlands, in Austria and in Denmark

Examine cartoons, posters, letters and much more.

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

In the United States,

in the Soviet Union

and in Germany

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan Comecon: Unity of Goals, Unity of Action

A poster published by the Soviet Union to promote Comecon an alternative to the Marshall Plan

What was the Soviet response?

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

The Czech leader Jan Masaryk:

I went to Moscow as the foreign minister of an independent sovereign state; I returned as a Soviet slave.

Jan Masaryk, the Czech leader

And how did eastern bloc countries view the Plan?

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

Unlike the other Communist countries in central and eastern Europe, Yugoslavia accepted US aid under the Marshall Plan. In 1945 Tito had been seen by Moscow as one of its loyalist allies. But by 1948 relations between Stalin and Tito were strained. Yugoslavias economic plan did not follow the Soviet model. The Soviet leadership were suspicious of the independent line Tito was taking on so many issues. He was able to do this because he had the full support of the Yugoslav communists due to the success which the partisans, led by Tito, had had in liberating their country from Axis occupation. Success which had not depended significantly on the military support of the Red Army. When Yugoslavia was expelled from COMINFORM Tito decided to accept US aid and became a founder member of the Non-Aligned Movement.

Tito, the Yugoslav leader

When so many Communist countries followed the Kremlin line in rejecting US aid in 1948-51, why did Yugoslavia accept?

COMINFORM
This was an international organisation of Communist parties founded in 1947 at a conference convened by Stalin. His main concern was that some East European Communist governments had shown interest in receiving aid from the USA. The objective of COMINFORM was to coordinate action between the different Communist parties in Europe under the direction of Moscow. Its official name was the Information Bureau of the Communist and Workers Parties. It was dissolved in 1955 after the death of Stalin and the process of deStalinization had begun within the Soviet Union. return

The Non-Aligned Movement

The Non-Aligned Movement was founded at the height of the Cold War in 1961 at a meeting in Belgrade, then the capital of Yugoslavia. Its objective was to ensure the national independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and security of countries that were not aligned to the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union. As of 2010 it had 118 member states representing nearly two-thirds of the membership of the United Nations. Yugoslavia was expelled in 1992 at the time of the breakup of the Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia and the internal wars. return

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan Stalin on the Yugoslav leader Tito and his comrades: despicable traitors and imperialist hirelings, gangs of spies, provocateurs, and murderers, dogs tied to American leashes, gnawing imperialist bones, and barking for American capital.

Cartoon of Stalin produced by unknown cartoonist for the British newspaper, the Daily Herald around 1935.

What was the Soviet response to Tito?

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan The post-World War II reconstruction of the economies and polities of Western Europe was an extraordinary success. Growth was fast, distributional conflicts in large part finessed, world trade booming.
Barry Eichengreen, who with J. Bradford De Long wrote: The Marshall Plan: Historys Most Successful Structural Adjustment Program, October 1991

What do historians and economists think now? Heres some of the examples you can find on the website

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

Milward argued that although the US aid between 1947 and 1951amounted to over $12 billion it was too small to significantly impact on economic recovery in Europe at that time and that the reconstruction of the economic and financial infrastructure was well underway even before aid under the Marshall Plan was provided.
Alan Milward, who died in 2010, was Professor of Economic History at University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology.

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan It (the Marshall Plan) gave a new impetus to reconstruction in Western Europe and made a decisive contribution to the renewal of the transport system, the modernization of industrial and agricultural equipment, the resumption of normal production, the raising of productivity and the facilitating of intra-European trade.

Professor Herman Van der Wee, economic historian at the University of Leuven in Belgium

Using Multiperspectivity comparing sources for the Marshall Plan

Cowen argues that the economic recoveries of West Germany, France, Italy and Belgium started before US aid was provided in 1947 and that the countries receiving the largest amounts of US aid at this time, Britain, Sweden and Greece, grew at the slowest rates between 1947 and1955. He also attributes the economic miracle in West Germany in the 1950s to the Federal German governments elimination of many of the restrictions on trade and prices which had been introduced by the Allied Control Commission.

Professor Tyler Cowen, economist at George Mason University, Fairfax Virginia, USA.

Online learning
The user of Historiana may be simply surfing through the material on the Marshall Plan or other developments in European history, acquiring a lot of useful information on the way. But we can also use the images, video and audio to enhance their deductive and problem-solving skills.
Here is a cartoon at the time of the Marshall Plan which can be found in history textbooks

The Toolbox
Digital media allows us to take a step that text books cannot. We can, for example, zoom in on relevant areas of this cartoon and ask questions.

Why do you suppose the cartoonist has drawn the wall so that it covers the last 'E' of EUROPE? And why do you suppose the cartoonist has drawn a railway line cut in two by the wall?

Who is the man peering under the wall? Why do you suppose the cartoonist chose him in particular?