The 1947 Marshall Plan was one of the most successful United States foreign policy initiatives during the Cold War period. Former Secretary of State and Harvard historian Henry Kissinger used it as an example to demonstrate positive outcomes when nations work together out of common necessity and in view of a common foe. Senator J. William Fulbright wrote that the Marshall Plan stopped the Soviet Union from possibly taking over Western Europe “through the manipulation of Communist parties, military intimidation, economic strangulation, and even more direct military action.”
Proposing the Marshall Plan
Speaking at Harvard University June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall presented the Marshall Plan and the rationale for its immediate implementation. Marshall had been to Europe and witnessed the deprivations still evident from years of war. These were serious problems that could derail European recovery efforts while playing into the hands of Stalin and the emergent Communist parties.
Marshall’s report of the Fourth Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, April 28, 1947, detailed the cataclysmic nature of the European economies. Marshall used coal production to highlight the problems: “less coal means less employment for labor and a consequent delay in the production of goods for export to bring money for the purchase of food and necessities.”
Coal was also linked to steel production. In short, the industrial infrastructure had to be rebuilt quickly. Production also meant a balance of trade between the United States and Europe, notably Germany. By early 1947, Germany was using precious credits to purchase food imports but not able to produce export goods. The Marshall Plan would change that.
European Participation and the Costs
Representatives of sixteen European nations met to create the proposal that would amount to $28 billion in assistance over a ten year period. The proposals were accepted by Marshall and President Truman, but created a furor in the Congress. The mid-term elections in 1946 had given Republicans control of the Congress and they were financially conservative. A key Republican leader, Senator Taft of Ohio, denounced the Marshall Plan as a “European TVA.”
Despite dire warning from the administration as well as forward thinking Republicans like Michigan’s Senator Arthur Vandenberg, the initially requested amount was significantly lowered. The chief event that caused passage of the Marshall Plan, however, was the early 1948 coup in Czechoslovakia in which pro-democratic, moderate leaders were either removed or murdered and replace by pro-Moscow Communists.
The Marshall Plan and Eastern Europe
The Truman administration did not want to exacerbate the Iron Curtain division between East and West, possibly for a long period into the future, and thus invited all nations – including Russia, to participate. There were enough strings attached, however, to keep Stalin from participating. Historian Stephen Ambrose writes that this was the very intention of the men like George Kennan, who crafted the policy and then invited Soviet participation.
The Poles, Czechs, and Hungarians wanted to participate, but were held back by Moscow. In his report on the Fifth Session of the Council of Foreign Ministers, December 19, 1947, Secretary of State Marshall, pointing to Germany, noted that the Soviet Union had employed “a type of monopolistic stranglehold over the economic and political life of eastern Germany which makes that region little more than a dependent province of the Soviet Union.”
Employing similar economic tactics in other Eastern European economies, Stalin not only made German reunification far more difficult in terms of integrated European economies, but forged a long term policy designed to distance European Communist nations from ever effectively competing with the West or the possibility of future integration.
The Marshall Plan worked. Along with NATO, it transformed Europe into a new society and promoted collective economic and political leadership in the face of a common adversary.
Sources:
Stephen E. Ambrose and Douglas G. Brinkley, Rise to Globalism: American Foreign Policy Since 1938 (Penguin Books, 1997)
Documents on Germany, 1944-1961, Committee on Foreign Relations, United States Senate (New York: Greenwood Press, 1968)
J. William Fulbright, The Crippled Giant: American Foreign Policy and its Domestic Consequences (New York: Random House, 1972)
See also: George C. Marshall Foundation for additional information
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