Military grants from the U.S. to foreign nations during the post-war period 1946-1953

Following the Second World War, the United States began extensive Foreign Military Financing (FMF) programs, assisting foreign governments in the purchase of American-made weapons, services and training. In these years, the vast majority of such grants went to countries in Western Europe, as the U.S. sought to suppress the expansion of communism across the region and assert its own influence as a global superpower. In 1953 alone, the U.S. granted over 3.5 billion U.S. dollars in military grants to Western European states, which was roughly one billion dollars more than the rest of the world combined between 1946 and 1953.