(Left) Dredgers funded by the Marshall Plan clear Greece’s Corinth Canal in 1948. (Right) A ship’s eye view shows the canal today.

The six-kilometer Corinth Canal, important to Greek shipping, cuts 400 kilometers from the journey around the Peloponnesus. The canal was vandalized by retreating Axis troops at the end of World War II. Marshall Plan aid helped the Greeks clear the canal of wrecked ships, sunken railroad cars, collapsed embankments and silted waterways. The canal reopened in 1950, and the port of Piraeus reopened as a busy trans-shipping center. (George C. Marshall Foundation)/(Long Passages Organization)