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Plotting a course to recovery
A poster by Dutch illustrator Reyn Dirksen for
the European Recovery Program, an initiative
launched under US secretary of state George
Marshall in 1948 to provide aid for European
countries struggling with postwar economic
recovery. But all colours were not on the mast:
the Soviet Union refused to allow satellite states
to participate in the ‘Marshall Plan’ by which
the US gave over $12 billion in aid to Europe.Seeing in black and white
The Afrikaner National Party leader Daniel François Malan
(1874–1959) is hoisted aloft by enthusiastic supporters in Johannesburg
following victory in the 1948 general election in South Africa.
Under Malan’s leadership, the new government introduced a range
of sweeping changes to enforce apartheid, separating white South
Africans from so-called ‘coloured’ and black people. Opposition to
these policies sparked a 40-year struggle to establish democracy and
civil rights for the country’s large non-white majority.