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Who is the Marshall Plan is named for?

• What did George C. Marshall do in World War I?
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What was the Marshall Plan?

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Marshall Plan

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The Marshall Plan was a U.S.-sponsored program designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive in the aftermath of World War II. It was formally called the European Recovery Program.

Which U.S. president signed the Marshall Plan into law?

U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed the Marshall Plan into law on April 3, 1948, after it was authorized by the U.S. Congress.

Which countries participated in the Marshall Plan?

Aid was initially offered to almost all European countries, but later some withdrew under the influence of the Soviet Union. The countries that remained were Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and western Germany.

In 1947 U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall , for whom the Marshall Plan is named, advanced the idea of a European self-help program to be financed by the United States, saying that "Europe’s requirements for the next three or four years...are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face ... deterioration of a very grave character."

Marshall Plan , (April 1948–December 1951), U.S.-sponsored program designed to rehabilitate the economies of 17 western and southern European countries in order to create stable conditions in which democratic institutions could survive.

The United States feared that the poverty , unemployment , and dislocation of the post- World War II period were reinforcing the appeal of communist parties to voters in western Europe . On June 5, 1947, in an address at Harvard University , Secretary of State George C. Marshall advanced the idea of a European self-help program to be financed by the United States, saying

The truth of the matter is that Europe’s requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products—principally from America—are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character.

On the basis of a unified plan for western European economic reconstruction presented by a committee representing 16 countries, the U.S. Congress authorized the establishment of the European Recovery Program, which was signed into law by U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman on April 3, 1948. Aid was originally offered to almost all the European countries, including those under military occupation by the Soviet Union . The Soviets early on withdrew from participation in the plan, however, and were soon followed by the other eastern European nations under their influence . This left the following countries to participate in the plan: Austria , Belgium , Denmark , France , Greece , Iceland , Ireland , Italy , Luxembourg , the Netherlands , Norway , Portugal , Sweden , Switzerland , Turkey , the United Kingdom , and western Germany .

Under Paul G. Hoffman , the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), a specially created bureau, distributed over the next four years some $13 billion worth of economic aid, helping to restore industrial and agricultural production, establish financial stability, and expand trade. Direct grants accounted for the vast majority of the aid, with the remainder in the form of loans. To coordinate the European participation, 16 countries, led by the United Kingdom and France, established the Committee of European Economic Cooperation to suggest a four-year recovery program. This organization was later replaced by the permanent Organisation for European Economic Co-operation (OEEC), to which West Germany was ultimately admitted.

The Marshall Plan was very successful. The western European countries involved experienced a rise in their gross national products of 15 to 25 percent during this period. The plan contributed greatly to the rapid renewal of the western European chemical, engineering, and steel industries. Truman extended the Marshall Plan to less-developed countries throughout the world under the Point Four Program , initiated in 1949.

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Marshall Plan

By: History.com Editors

Updated: November 1, 2022 | Original: December 16, 2009

The Marshall Plan, also known as the European Recovery Program, was a U.S. program providing aid to Western Europe following the devastation of World War II. It was enacted in 1948 and provided more than $15 billion to help finance rebuilding efforts on the continent. The brainchild of U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, for whom it was named, it was crafted as a four-year plan to reconstruct cities, industries and infrastructure heavily damaged during the war and to remove trade barriers between European neighbors—as well as foster commerce between those countries and the United States.

Europe After World War II

Post-war Europe was in dire straits: Millions of its citizens had been killed or seriously wounded in World War II , and in related atrocities such as the Holocaust .

Many cities—including the industrial and cultural centers of London , Dresden , Berlin, Cologne, Liverpool, Birmingham and Hamburg—had been partly or wholly destroyed. Reports provided to Marshall suggested that some regions of the continent were on the brink of famine because agricultural and other food production had been disrupted by the fighting.

In addition, the region’s transportation infrastructure—railways, electric utilities, port facilities, roads, bridges and airports—had suffered extensive damage during airstrikes and artillery attacks, and the shipping fleets of many countries had been sunk. In fact, it could be argued that the only world power not structurally damaged by the conflict had been the United States.

The reconstruction coordinated under the Marshall Plan was formulated following a meeting of the participating European states in the latter half of 1947. Notably, invitations were extended to the Soviet Union and its satellite states.

However, they refused to join the effort, allegedly fearing U.S. involvement in their respective national affairs.

Truman Approves the Marshall Plan

President Harry Truman signed the Marshall Plan on April 3, 1948, and aid was distributed to 16 European nations, including Britain, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, West Germany and Norway.

To highlight the significance of America’s largesse, the billions committed in aid effectively amounted to a generous 5 percent of U.S. gross domestic product at the time.

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What Was the Marshall Plan?

The Marshall Plan provided aid to the recipients essentially on a per capita basis, with larger amounts given to major industrial powers, such as West Germany, France and Great Britain. This was based on the belief of Marshall and his advisors that recovery in these larger nations was essential to overall European recovery.

Still, not all participating nations benefitted equally. Nations such as Italy, who had fought with the Axis powers alongside Nazi Germany, and those who remained neutral (e.g., Switzerland) received less assistance per capita than those countries who fought with the United States and the other Allied powers.

The notable exception was West Germany: Though all of Germany was damaged significantly toward the end of World War II, a viable and revitalized West Germany was seen as essential to economic stability in the region, and as a not-so-subtle rebuke of the communist government and economic system on the other side of the “Iron Curtain” in East Germany.

In all, Great Britain received roughly one-quarter of the total aid provided under the Marshall Plan, while France was given less than one fifth of the funds.

In addition to economic redevelopment, one of the stated goals of the Marshall Plan was to halt the spread of communism on the European continent.

Implementation of the Marshall Plan has been cited as the beginning of the Cold War between the United States, its European allies and the Soviet Union, which had effectively taken control of much of central and eastern Europe and established its satellite republics as communist nations.

The Marshall Plan is also considered a key catalyst for the formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) , a military alliance between North American and European countries established in 1949.

Impact of the Marshall Plan

Interestingly, in the decades since its implementation, the true economic benefit of the Marshall Plan has been the subject of much debate. Indeed, reports at the time suggest that, by the time the plan took effect, Western Europe was already well on the road to recovery.

And, despite the significant investment on the part of the United States, the funds provided under the Marshall Plan accounted for less than 3 percent of the combined national incomes of the countries that received them. This led to relatively modest growth of GDP in these countries during the four-year period the plan was in effect.

That said, by the time of the plan’s final year, 1952, economic growth in the countries that had received funds had surpassed pre-war levels, a strong indicator of the program’s positive impact, at least economically.

Political Legacy of the Marshall Plan

Politically, however, the legacy of the Marshall Plan arguably tells a different story. Given the refusal to participate on the part of the so-called Eastern Bloc of Soviet states, the initiative certainly reinforced divisions that were already beginning to take root on the continent.

It’s worth noting, too, that the Central Intelligence Agency ( CIA ), the secret service agency of the United States, received 5 percent of the funds allocated under the Marshall Plan. The CIA used these funds to establish “front” businesses in several European countries that were designed to further U.S. interests in the region.

The agency also allegedly financed an anti-communist insurgency in Ukraine, which at the time was a Soviet satellite state.

By and large, though, the Marshall Plan was generally lauded for the desperately needed boost it gave America’s European allies. As the designer of the plan, George C. Marshall himself said, “Our policy is not directed against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.”

Still, efforts to extend the Marshall Plan beyond its initial four-year period stalled with the beginning of the Korean War in 1950. The countries that received funds under the plan didn’t have to repay the United States, as the monies were awarded in the form of grants. However, the countries did return roughly 5 percent of the money to cover the administrative costs of the plan’s implementation.

Department of State. Office of the Historian. Marshall Plan, 1948. History.state.gov . The Marshall Plan. The George C. Marshall Foundation . Truman and the Marshall Plan. Harry S. Truman Library and Museum .

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The Marshall Plan

In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin’s on the rise, U.S. officials under new secretary of state George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.

Teaching Notes by Benn Steil

May 7, 2018 11:49 am (EST)

Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949, The Marshall Plan brings to life the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations—the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, we see vividly Joseph Stalin’s determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe. Given current echoes of the Cold War, as Vladimir Putin’s Russia rattles the world order, the tenuous balance of power and uncertain order of the late 1940s is as relevant as ever. The Marshall Plan provides critical context for understanding today’s international landscape. Bringing to bear important new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Benn Steil’s account will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan and the birth of the Cold War. The book provides a clear, detailed, and incisive political and economic analysis of the Marshall Plan in its historical context, making it a valuable text for undergraduate and graduate courses on:

• Political economy and international relations  
• Cold War history  
• Twentieth century U.S. economic and diplomatic history  
• Twentieth century European economic and diplomatic history

Discussion and Essay Questions

Courses on political economy and international relations.

Political History and Theory

U.S. Foreign Policy

• Why and how did the Truman administration come to choose a massive U.S.-administered grants-in-aid plan as a primary diplomatic tool in Europe?  
• Did the Marshall Plan work as an economic recovery program? Did it work as a diplomatic strategy?  
• What is unusual, in terms of contemporary economic thinking, about the economic thinking behind the Marshall Plan? Consider in particular the role of monetary policy and exchange rates.  
• The United States has spent far more on reconstruction aid, in current dollars, in Iraq and Afghanistan than it did on the Marshall Plan. Why hasn’t it been more successful?  
• Could a “Marshall Plan” have worked, or could it work, as an economic and diplomatic strategy outside the early Cold War context?

Courses on the Cold War and Twentieth Century U.S. and European History and Politics

• When, why, and how do you believe the Cold War started, and could it have been avoided?  
• Was the early Cold War a conflict based mainly on ideology, geography, or something else?  
• Why was Germany so pivotal in the early Cold War?  
• To what extent did the United States impose policies on Marshall aid recipients, and to what extent did it permit them to chart their own course?  
• To what extent did the Marshall Plan influence the development of important multinational institutions like the United Nations, the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?  
• Is the present conflict between Russia and the West a continuation of the Cold War or something new, based on factors unrelated to the Cold War?  
• How did the thrust in U.S. foreign policy change from FDR to Truman? How might it have been different had FDR lived to finish his fourth term—that is, to what extent was the transition to Truman important or unimportant?  
• To what extent was the Marshall Plan a logical evolution in U.S. foreign policy or a radical break from earlier traditions?

Further Projects

Op-ed  .

Write an 800-word opinion piece arguing that the Marshall Plan shows us the importance, or alternatively the limitations, of non-military approaches to security.

Assign students to one of two groups, the first one arguing that NATO expansion after the collapse of the Soviet Union was a good strategy for the United States and the second arguing that it was not. Both groups should make reference to the early Cold War period, and the lessons that could be drawn from it. The facilitator should ensure that students distinguish between policy that is good in terms of moral principle and policy that is effective in achieving its aims.

Discuss President Trump’s National Security Strategy

Students should discuss President Trump’s December 2017 National Security Strategy (NSS) in light of the early Cold War experience. Among the questions that should be considered are the following:

• To what extent should alliances be considered important to the NSS?  
• How should economics fit into the NSS?  
• How should the NSS reflect changes in the economic and security environment since the early Cold War period?

Supplementary Materials

Acheson, Dean G. Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department . New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1969.

Gaddis, John Lewis. George F. Kennan: An American Life. New York: Penguin Press, 2011.

Haas, Lawrence J. Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World. Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2016.

Harrington, Daniel F. Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War . Lexington, KY: Kentucky University Press, 2012. 

Isaacson, Walter, and Evan Thomas. The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986 [2012].

Kennan, George F. (“X”). “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” Foreign Affairs . July 1947.

Kennan, George F. “NATO: A Fateful Error.” New York Times . February 5, 1997.

McCullough, David. Truman . New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Milward, Alan S. The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945-51. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984.

Narinsky, Mikhail M. “The Soviet Union and the Marshall Plan.” Cold War International History Project Working Paper Series . No. 7. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, March 1994.

Parrish, Scott D. “The Turn Toward Confrontation: The Soviet Reaction to the Marshall Plan, 1947.” Cold War International History Project Working Paper Series . No. 7. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, March 1994.

Pechatnov, Vladimir O., and C. Earl Edmondson. “The Russian Perspective.” In Debating the Origins of the Cold War: American and Russian Perspectives , edited by Ralph B. Levering, Vladimir O. Pechatnov, Verena Botzenhart-Viehe, and C. Earl Edmondson. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.

Yergin, Daniel. Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977. Download the Teaching Notes

Visit the Book Page

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The Cold War

The marshall plan.

In March 1947 United States president Harry Truman unveiled what became known as the Truman Doctrine , pledging US support for European countries so they could exercise self-determination and resist a communist takeover. The first practical elements of this policy came in May 1947, with the approval of aid packages for Greece ($400 million) and Turkey ($100 million). Much more was to come in June with the promulgation of the European Recovery Program (ERP). It became known as the ‘Marshall Plan’ after its chief promoter, Secretary of State George Marshall . Members of the US government viewed the economic reconstruction of Europe as a matter of great urgency. There were two reasons for this. Firstly, economic instability would generate political instability and may lead to communist revolutions. Secondly, the future of US trade was dependent on a productive and prosperous Europe. Marshall explained this in a June 1947 speech to Harvard University students:

“Aside from the demoralising effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the [European] people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health to the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is not directed against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Any government that is willing to assist in recovery will find full co-operation on the part of the United States of America. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.”

American leaders scheduled a conference for July 1947 in Paris, to negotiate an aid package for rebuilding Europe and its economies. Delegates attended from 16 European countries; the Soviet Union, Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary did not attend, the latter three withdrawing under pressure from Moscow. The European delegates drafted a reconstruction plan that required $22 billion of credit. Truman whittled this down to $17 billion and sent draft legislation to Congress in early 1948. Isolationists in Congress attempted to block funding for the Marshall Plan. They resented the expenditure of American taxpayers’ money on foreign countries, several of which had defaulted on their wartime debts to the US. Many American businesses weren’t keen on reconstructing European industries that might grow to compete with their own. Some suggested giving food and material only, rather than credit. The left-wing in America and elsewhere condemned the Marshall Plan as an attempt to strengthen the grip of US-led capitalism on Western Europe. A few economic purists complained because of the plan’s significant interference in European markets. Despite these objections, Congress approved the Marshall Plan and authorised an initial payment of $5.3 billion in April 1948.

Marshall Plan funds were by no means a ‘blank cheque’ for European governments. The US was determined to fund essential areas of development and avoid corruption or ‘skimming’. The Americans set rigorous conditions on Marshall Plan funding, reserving the right to cease this funding if recipient nations did not follow certain directives. The US Congress established the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) to oversee the distribution of its funds. ECA representatives were stationed in European countries and played a pivotal role in approving, directing and monitoring Marshall Plan money. Local governments were required to adopt certain economic policies; ECA bureaucrats studied their economies and decided where and how funds were needed most. Countries importing certain raw materials or manufactured goods were required to buy them from American suppliers. The ECA also provided advice on management and productivity, as noted by Duignan:

“The Americans also delivered know-how. For example, at the Doboelman soap works in Holland, American experts showed the Dutch how to cut processing time from five days to two hours with new machinery. In Norway, fishermen used a new type of net made from yarn spun in Italy. In Offenbach in West Germany, Marshall Plan leather revived the handbag industry. In Lille, Marshall Plan coal kept a steel factory in business. And in Roubaix, Marshall Plan wood maintained one of the world’s largest textile mills. In 1945, only twenty-five thousand tractors were in use on French farms – four years later, Marshall Plan aid had put another two hundred thousand tractors in the field. Overall, American investment in Western Europe grew apace, and more and more U.S. patents found customers abroad.”

The Marshall Plan would run for four years and cost more than $US13 billion. This aid not only facilitated the recovery of Europe’s national economies, it had obvious advantages for the United States. Not only was the Marshall Plan successful in stabilising many European governments and blocking Soviet expansion, it built a ‘new Europe’ with a political economy was based on open markets and free trade, rather than protectionism and self-interest. This allowed American exporters to enter European markets more easily than was possible before World War II. Other advantages for the United States included:

Soviet containment . The Marshall Plan stabilised the economies and political systems in several European nations bordering the Soviet sphere of influence. This reduced the likelihood of communist takeovers in these countries. Political instability in these countries might also have given Moscow an excuse to annex them.

Liberalisation . The Marshall Plan encouraged the development of liberal-democratic systems of government in Europe. Since some European countries had no positive experience of democracy, particularly Germany and Austria, it was important to create conditions of prosperity under which liberalism and democracy could survive.

“What the Machiavellis among us never understood was why the Soviet Union did not join the Marshall Plan and disrupt it, as they have done with many organisations. It would not cost anything. It would be simple to agree in principle and object in practice. The fear in Washington was that the Soviet bear might hug the Marshall Plan to death. Soviet abstention left the West free to operate its own recovery programme, with the Soviet Union excluded at its own insistence.” Charles Kindleberger, historian

Profit for American companies . Most of the resources and goods purchased with Marshall Plan funds came from the United States itself. This had obvious benefits for American exporters and domestic industries. Marshall Plan spending allowed the US to recover from a short-term economic slump in 1946-7 and enter a period of economic boom. American corporations built networks and established trade links in Europe that continued well after the ERP had run its course.

Encouragement of free trade . Prior to World War II most European nations had protectionist economic policies – in other words, it was difficult for foreign traders to export to European markets. The conditions placed on Marshall Plan aid injected free trade policies and practices into European economics. As mentioned above, these reforms would prove beneficial and profitable for American producers and manufacturers.

Propaganda value . The Marshall Plan was cleverly marketed by the American government as a generous and visionary policy, to allow the rebuilding of Europe. The conditions on Marshall Plan funds, however, were not publicly advertised. Washington also offered ERP aid to the Soviet Union and Soviet-bloc countries, knowing that the conditions would make it impossible for them to accept.

1. The Marshall Plan was another name for the European Recovery Plan (ERP). The ERP was an extensive aid program for post-war Europe, approved by Harry Truman in 1947.

2. In the four-year period between 1947 and 1951, more than $13 billion of American aid was advanced to European nations for post-war reconstruction.

3. Marshall Plan aid was overseen by the ECA and remitted with strict conditions. Among them were the adoption of free-market economic policies and liberal-democratic political systems.

4. This aid enabled the post-war reconstruction of Europe. It also advanced American commercial interests by stimulating the US economy and opening up Europe for future trade.

5. In the context of the Cold War, the Marshall Plan helped weak and war-ravaged governments and economies to recover and avoid falling prey to communist infiltration or revolution. It was also a significant propaganda device for the US.

Content on this page is © Alpha History 2018. This content may not be republished or distributed without permission. For more information please refer to our Terms of Use . This page was written by Jennifer Llewellyn, Jim Southey and Steve Thompson. To reference this page, use the following citation: J. Llewellyn et al, “The Marshall Plan”, Alpha History, accessed [today’s date], https://alphahistory.com/coldwar/marshall-plan/.

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The Marshall Plan

An essay by Hoover fellows Peter Duignan and the late Lewis H. Gann on the fiftieth anniversary of "the greatest voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another."

The Marshall Plan formed the greatest voluntary transfer of resources from one country to another known to history. Technically known as the European Recovery Program, the plan was passed by the U.S. Congress with a decisive majority and was signed by President Truman on April 3, 1948--just in time to influence the Italian election in that year.

The Marshall Plan did not, in and of itself, cause Western European economic recovery. Indeed, there was little direct correlation between the amount of U.S. aid received and the speed of economic recovery in the various recipient countries. France and Britain obtained much more aid per capita than West Germany, which nevertheless progressed more quickly than either. But the Marshall Plan (guided by the European Cooperation Administration, ECA) helped to tide Western Europe over a dangerous period. The plan provided new confidence to Western Europe; the plan furnished money, food, fuel, and machinery at a time when the Western European economies were all in disarray. Marshall Plan experts argued in favor of free trade, decentralized management, breaking up of cartels, the elimination of quotas and customs, and labor-saving technologies.

The Americans also delivered know-how. For example, at the Doboelman soap works in Holland, American experts showed the Dutch how to cut processing time from five days to two hours with new machinery. In Norway, fishermen used a new type of net made from yarn spun in Italy. In Offenbach in West Germany, Marshall Plan leather revived the handbag industry; in Lille, Marshall Plan coal kept a steel factory in business; and in Roubaix, Marshall Plan wood maintained one of the world's largest textile mills. In 1945, only twenty-five thousand tractors were in use on French farms; four years later, Marshall Plan aid had put another two hundred thousand tractors in the field. Overall, American investment in Western Europe grew apace, and more and more U.S. patents found customers abroad. Americans had good reason for talking about "the American century."

A host of U.S. technical experts, consultants, and managers also contributed their experience to Western Europe. But there was also a reverse flow of Europeans to the United States. As William James Adams, an economist, puts it with regard to France:

Under the Marshall Plan, France dispatched large numbers of business executives, trade unionists, civil servants to the United States with an eye toward absorption of American productivity. They returned not only with . . . butch haircuts and wineless lunches, but also with an appreciation of how business was conducted in a relatively dynamic, seemingly disorganized setting.

The plan likewise presented an immense U.S. political commitment. Not for nothing did George C. Marshall, a professional soldier, receive the Nobel Peace Prize for his efforts. In a more intangible sense, Europeans benefited from the American sense of optimism and the American premise that peace, labor productivity, consumerism, welfare, and profits went hand in hand--this at a time when gloomy existentialist philosophies were in high fashion among European intellectuals. America produced cheaper coal (coal miners struck in Europe's coldest winter, 1946) and sent food to tide the Europeans over and then the means to revive quickly their economies through the Marshall Plan. The Marshall Plan, like NATO, created an intricate network of intra-European and transatlantic contacts among businessmen, civil servants, and trade unionists.

Above all, the Marshall Plan was designed to push Europeans toward political and economic cooperation--a major objective of U.S. policymakers. Paul G. Hoffman, who headed the ECA, predicted European unification through a common market. Aid was administered through the OEEC (Organization for European Economic Cooperation, created in 1948, replaced in 1961 by the OECD, Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development). In terms of a narrowly conceived realpolitik, the Americans might have benefited from dealing separately with their European allies in a strictly bilateral fashion. In practice, the Americans looked toward a new Western European economic association.

The United States was both a lobbyist for a united Europe and also a role model. Surely, European federalists argued, the United States could not have developed into the world's greatest economic power had the fifty states remained divided by customs barriers and if a New Yorker visiting California were obliged to show his passport every time he crossed the border of a state. The OEEC created a network of transnational bodies and transnational committees to deal with specialized questions. (These included the European Payments Union [EPU], set up in 1950, and a central bank and clearinghouse for intra-European trade and payments. By 1959 the European currencies had largely become convertible, and the EPU was replaced by the European Monetary Agreement.)

Yet the Marshall Plan was only passed against heavy U.S. domestic opposition. American isolationists resented having to spend American taxpayers' money on foreign countries that had already defaulted on their previous debts from World War I. Businessmen didn't want to reconstruct competitor European industries. Congressmen only wanted to give food, not loans. The Soviet Union and its allies all the world over denounced the plan for strengthening the hold of U.S. capitalism on Western Europe; hence the Soviet Union would not become a beneficiary of the plan, nor would Moscow permit any of its satellites to participate. Even pro-American Europeans were bound to feel uneasy. It was hard to ask a foreign country for aid, harder still to ask aid from a donor whom visiting European dignitaries had traditionally described in unflattering terms. A handful of purists also complained because of the plan's Keynesian connotations, its refusal to leave European recovery to the free market alone.

Nevertheless, the plan worked. It succeeded in part because it gained widespread political acceptance within the United States itself--a remarkable political achievement. The plan represented a new welfare capitalism--confident, committed to raising productivity, raising wages, expanding markets, and establishing good labor relations by depoliticizing trade unionism. The Marshall planners were convinced that only a prosperous Europe would resist communism and that only a prosperous Europe would provide expanding markets for U.S. as well as European producers. On the whole, the plan was well administered; there were no scandals, no massive diversion of funds into the pockets of political and bureaucratic racketeers. Yet the expenditure involved was astronomical by the standards of the time. The Marshall Plan and other forms of foreign assistance between them cost the United States $17.6 billion (or $120 billion in current value for the Marshall Plan alone)--as we said, the largest voluntary transfer of resources in history. Ten years after the end of the greatest war in history, Western Europe had not only fully recovered but had become far more prosperous and productive than before.

Adapted from The USA and the New Europe, 1945–1993 , Published by Blackwell. Used with permission. To order, call 800-903-1181. The following books, available from the Hoover Press , provide additional information on the Marshall Plan: The Rebirth of the West: The Americanization of the Democratic World, 1945–1958 , by Peter Duignan and L. H. Gann, and Our Finest Hour: Will Clayton, the Marshall Plan, and the Triumph of Democracy, by Gregory A. Fossedal. Also available as part of the Essays in Public Policy series is "World War II and Europe", by Peter Duignan and L. H. Gann. To order, call 800-935-2882.

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The Marshall Plan

Introduction

In the wake of World War II, with Britain’s empire collapsing and Stalin’s on the rise, U.S. officials under new secretary of state George C. Marshall set out to reconstruct western Europe as a bulwark against communist authoritarianism. Their massive, costly, and ambitious undertaking would confront Europeans and Americans alike with a vision at odds with their history and self-conceptions. In the process, they would drive the creation of NATO, the European Union, and a Western identity that continues to shape world events.

Focusing on the critical years 1947 to 1949,  The Marshall Plan  brings to life the seminal episodes marking the collapse of postwar U.S.-Soviet relations—the Prague coup, the Berlin blockade, and the division of Germany. In each case, we see vividly Joseph Stalin’s determination to crush the Marshall Plan and undermine American power in Europe. Given current echoes of the Cold War, as Vladimir Putin’s Russia rattles the world order, the tenuous balance of power and uncertain order of the late 1940s is as relevant as ever.  The Marshall Plan  provides critical context for understanding today’s international landscape. Bringing to bear important new material from American, Russian, German, and other European archives, Benn Steil’s account will forever change how we see the Marshall Plan and the birth of the Cold War. The book provides a clear, detailed, and incisive political and economic analysis of the Marshall Plan in its historical context, making it a valuable text for undergraduate and graduate courses on:

• Political economy and international relations  
• Cold War history  
• Twentieth century U.S. economic and diplomatic history  
• Twentieth century European economic and diplomatic history

Essay and Discussion Questions

Courses on political economy and international relations.

• Why and how did the Truman administration come to choose a massive U.S.-administered grants-in-aid plan as a primary diplomatic tool in Europe?  
• Did the Marshall Plan work as an economic recovery program? Did it work as a diplomatic strategy?  
• What is unusual, in terms of contemporary economic thinking, about the economic thinking behind the Marshall Plan? Consider in particular the role of monetary policy and exchange rates.  
• The United States has spent far more on reconstruction aid, in current dollars, in Iraq and Afghanistan than it did on the Marshall Plan. Why hasn’t it been more successful?  
• Could a “Marshall Plan” have worked, or could it work, as an economic and diplomatic strategy outside the early Cold War context?

Courses on the Cold War and Twentieth Century U.S. and European History and Politics

• When, why, and how do you believe the Cold War started, and could it have been avoided?  
• Was the early Cold War a conflict based mainly on ideology, geography, or something else?  
• Why was Germany so pivotal in the early Cold War?  
• To what extent did the United States impose policies on Marshall aid recipients, and to what extent did it permit them to chart their own course?  
• To what extent did the Marshall Plan influence the development of important multinational institutions like the United Nations, the European Union, and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization?  
• Is the present conflict between Russia and the West a continuation of the Cold War or something new, based on factors unrelated to the Cold War?  
• How did the thrust in U.S. foreign policy change from FDR to Truman? How might it have been different had FDR lived to finish his fourth term—that is, to what extent was the transition to Truman important or unimportant?  
• To what extent was the Marshall Plan a logical evolution in U.S. foreign policy or a radical break from earlier traditions?

Supplementary Materials

Acheson, Dean G.  Present at the Creation: My Years in the State Department . New York: W.W. Norton & Company, 1969.

Gaddis, John Lewis.  George F. Kennan: An American Life.  New York: Penguin Press, 2011.

Haas, Lawrence J.  Harry and Arthur: Truman, Vandenberg, and the Partnership That Created the Free World.  Lincoln, NE: Potomac Books, 2016.

Harrington, Daniel F.  Berlin on the Brink: The Blockade, the Airlift, and the Early Cold War . Lexington, KY: Kentucky University Press, 2012. 

Isaacson, Walter, and Evan Thomas.  The Wise Men: Six Friends and the World They Made.  New York: Simon & Schuster, 1986 [2012].

Kennan, George F. (“X”). “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.”  Foreign Affairs . July 1947.

Kennan, George F. “NATO: A Fateful Error.”  New York Times . February 5, 1997.

McCullough, David.  Truman . New York: Simon & Schuster, 1992.

Milward, Alan S.  The Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1945-51.  Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1984.

Narinsky, Mikhail M. “The Soviet Union and the Marshall Plan.”  Cold War International History Project Working Paper Series . No. 7. Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, March 1994.

Parrish, Scott D. “The Turn Toward Confrontation: The Soviet Reaction to the Marshall Plan, 1947.”  Cold War International History Project Working Paper Series . No. 7. Washington, D.C.: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, March 1994.

Pechatnov, Vladimir O., and C. Earl Edmondson. “The Russian Perspective.” In  Debating the Origins of the Cold War: American and Russian Perspectives , edited by Ralph B. Levering, Vladimir O. Pechatnov, Verena Botzenhart-Viehe, and C. Earl Edmondson. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Littlefield, 2001.

Yergin, Daniel.  Shattered Peace: The Origins of the Cold War and the National Security State.  Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1977.

Time Essay: The Marshall Plan: A Memory, a Beacon

Britain’s Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin called it “the most unsordid act of history.” To Willy Brandt, speaking later as Chancellor of West Germany, it was “one of the strokes of providence of this century, a century that has not so very ‘often been illuminated by the light of reason.” It was launched upon the world in Harvard Yard just 30 years ago this week —in what was surely one of the most momentous commencement day speeches ever made. Sunshine tattered through the decorous elms as Harvard staged its first normal graduation exercises since the end of World War II. The morning ceremonies that spotlighted the new graduates concluded with the awarding of honorary degrees. T.S. Eliot was among the recipients. Another was a white-haired man in a plain gray suit who rose in response to President James Bryant Conant’s swift and eloquent citation: “An American to whom freedom owes an enduring debt of gratitude, a soldier and statesman whose ability and character brook only one comparison in the history of the nation.”

As the assemblage surged to its feet in a warm ovation, Secretary of State George Catlett Marshall, who had commanded all of America’s military forces during the war, bowed, accepted his doctor of laws degree and sat down again. In his pocket, ticking off the day like a hidden bomb, was a speech whose content would shape a new world era and dwarf by its magnitude all the fame that Marshall had so far won. That afternoon, when his turn came to make a “few remarks” during the traditional alumni ceremonies in front of Memorial Church, Marshall quietly took out his speech and read it to his audience. Thus was born the Marshall Plan, an epochal —and magnanimous—undertaking unmatched in all of history. Through it, in the space of four years, the U.S. would spend an unheard-of $13.6 billion to underwrite the economic —and in a sense, the social and political—recovery of war-torn Western Europe, defeated enemies included.

When Marshall rose to read his speech, the war had long since been won, but not the peace. By early 1947 Soviet adventurism had inspired the Truman Doctrine, with its pledge of military help to any free people threatened by Communist aggression. By April, after a long and fruitless foreign ministers’ conference in Moscow, the U.S. Government abandoned all expectations of obtaining cooperation from the Russians—even in balming the wounds of war let alone in fashioning a new world order. In Asia, China was on the verge of falling to Mao. Of most concern to Americans, however, was Europe, which teetered on the brink of a general economic collapse that seemed beyond the capacity of her ever divided nations to forestall.

Marshall’s words that day in June 1947 not only gave desperate Europe a reason to hope but also snatched the initiative in the cold war away from Russia. Marshall wrought a revolutionary departure in American foreign policy, wrenching the nation out of an isolationist disposition that tracked back to George Washington. The European recovery plan that bore Marshall’s name—Harry Truman insisted it be so titled—set the stage for the primary defense arrangements in use today by the Atlantic community. Without the economic and political base created by the Marshall Plan, NATO could not have come into being. Nor, likely, would the capacity of European nations for cooperation today ever have blossomed. The ideas that Marshall set forth are, in fact, still making history. At least an echo of his spirit of innovation could be heard last week in President Carter’s promise at Notre Dame to “create a wider framework of international cooperation suited to the new historical circumstances.”

As far as Marshall’s audience knew before he spoke, the Secretary of State would merely add his bit to the usual commencement pieties. No ballyhoo had preceded him; no Washington flacks had scurried about alerting the press that a “major” statement would be forthcoming. In fact, say some who were there, neither Marshall’s typically spare language nor his earnest but dry delivery awakened that gathering fully to a realization that here history was being made.

“I need not tell you, gentlemen, that the world situation is very serious,” the speech blandly began. “That must be apparent to all intelligent people.” Then Marshall sketched Europe’s devastation and economic disruption:

“The town and city industries are not producing adequate goods to exchange with the food-producing farmer . . . People in the cities are short of food and fuel. .. The division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.”

Europe, in short, was broke, shattered—and desperate.

In April, Marshall had come back from Moscow convinced that the Russians had every intention of exploiting Europe’s misery. Then in May, Will Clayton, his Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, reported a rapidly worsening situation. Immediately, Marshall had given George F. Kennan and his policy planning staff two weeks to draft a plan to save Europe. Under Secretary Dean Acheson, as well as Clayton, contributed heavily to the proposals that were boiled down into the 950-word speech. Now Marshall came to the meat of it:

“The truth of the matter is that Europe’s requirements for the next three or four years … are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social and political deterioration of a very grave character … Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.”

And then to the heart of it:

“Our.policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis … Any assistance that this government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative.”

One final crucial point grew out of a wish to force European nations to cease their eternal bickering and begin working together toward a longer-range goal of integration:

“The initiative, I think, must come from Europe. “

Afterward, Marshall wondered whether his message had really got across. Had Under Secretary Acheson been right in advising against using the commencement as a forum on the ground that speeches there were “a ritual to be endured without hearing”? The audience had received him warmly, at start and finish, but had broken in with applause only once —and not at the most significant place. Marshall, as he had confided to associates, had hoped that the speech would trigger an “explosive” effect.

In fact, it did so—not in the U.S., although it soon got behind the idea, but in Europe, where the response was instant. That same night, Britain’s Foreign Secretary Bevin began arranging the conferences in which Europe’s nations would assess their needs as a region and go to the U.S. with a program in hand. As Marshall intended, all of Europe—Russia included—was invited to take part. But Russia, after the first conference, refused—and declared war on the plan as another example of U.S. efforts to enslave Europe. Finally 16 nations joined in developing a program.

Meanwhile, in the U.S., the Democratic Administration and G.O.P.-run Congress began hammering out enabling legislation in a bi partisan mood fostered mainly by Re publican Senator Arthur Vandenburg. Congress doubtless saw the plan in terms of cold war designs, and its passage was helped substantially by Stalin’s hostility to it. President Harry Truman himself considered the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan “two halves of the same walnut.” He signed the law on April 3, 1948. Two weeks after that the freighter John H. Quick left Galveston, Texas, with 9,000 long tons of wheat for France — the first item of a vast outpouring of aid that would eventually include machine tools, farm equipment and raw materials of almost every sort.

The Marshall Plan worked faster than anyone had thought possible. By 1951, Western Europe’s industrial production had soared to 40% above prewar levels, and its farm output was bigger than ever. Western Europe’s current status as a vigorous economic competitor of the U.S. testifies to the plan’s effectiveness.

Today the Marshall Plan is only a bright memory. But the very act of recalling its historic impact raises the question: Would the U.S. ever again give itself to an undertaking of such boldness and magnitude? Surely some of the world’s conspicuous difficulties — the food and energy shortages, to name but two glaring ones — seem deserving of comparable heroic efforts. Such problems so far, however, have inspired occasional grand rhetoric without matching action. So perhaps a better question is: Could the U.S. today even muster the combination of generosity, self-sacrifice and determined will that it dedicated to the rescue of Western Europe? Does the national character remain capable of that spirit?

Beyond doubt the American temper is strikingly different today from what it was then. After World War II, the nation enjoyed an almost cocky belief that it could do anything — and everything. Had not the U.S. just saved civilization? Did not the U.S. own the Bomb? Most Americans were eager to proclaim their nation the greatest. And they turned out to be perfectly willing to prove it — once they had been asked to. Americans of Marshall’s day, of course, also had trust in their Government — and a certitude about their power to prevail that had not been crumpled by Viet Nam.

The loss of trust and certainty are major differences in post-Watergate America. The nation also, more than in the past, nurses cynical doubts about the Government’s capacity to solve any social problems — those at home or abroad. More over, Americans of 1977 often seem confused, in the words of one scholar, “as to where and in what way American power and intelligence can be most usefully applied.” The words are those of a man who happened to direct the Marshall Plan in Europe in 1950-51 — Professor Milton Katz, now director of international legal studies at Harvard Law School. Katz nonetheless believes that granted the recovery of trust and some clear sense of national purpose, the country could still match the great deeds of the postwar era.

Most thoughtful Americans — particularly those old enough to have seen the nation at its best — are likely to agree. That adviser to many Presidents, Lawyer Clark Clifford, does. “I don’t think there’s been any radical change in the American character,” he says. And ever buoyant Hubert Humphrey, mulling the Marshall Plan days last week, ventured a feeling that seems typical in Washington: “I think we would do it over again — if the same circumstances existed.”

There, of course, is the crux of the matter. History never quite repeats itself. The Marshall Plan arose out of a specific juncture of event, public mood and leadership. And who could possibly guess when and how such an impelling convergence might occur again? Nobody. But it would nonetheless be hazardous to assume, if it did occur, that the American people would fail to yield their best once more.

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Milestone Documents

Marshall Plan (1948)

Citation: Act of April 3, 1948, European Recovery Act [Marshall Plan]; Enrolled Acts and Resolutions of Congress, 1789-1996; General Records of the United States Government; Record Group 11; National Archives.

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On April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the Economic Recovery Act of 1948. It became known as the Marshall Plan, named for Secretary of State George Marshall, who in 1947 proposed that the United States provide economic assistance to restore the economic infrastructure of postwar Europe.

When World War II ended in 1945, Europe lay in ruins: its cities were shattered; its economies were devastated; its people faced famine. In the two years after the war, the Soviet Union’s control of Eastern Europe and the vulnerability of Western European countries to Soviet expansionism heightened the sense of crisis.

To meet this emergency, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed in a speech at Harvard University on June 5, 1947, that European nations create a plan for their economic reconstruction and that the United States provide economic assistance.

On December 19, 1947, President Harry Truman sent Congress a message that followed Marshall’s ideas to provide economic aid to Europe. Congress overwhelmingly passed the Economic Cooperation Act of 1948, and on April 3, 1948, President Truman signed the act that became known as the Marshall Plan.

Over the next four years, Congress appropriated $13.3 billion for European recovery. This aid provided much needed capital and materials that enabled Europeans to rebuild the continent’s economy.

For the United States, the Marshall Plan provided markets for American goods, created reliable trading partners, and supported the development of stable democratic governments in Western Europe. Congress’s approval of the Marshall Plan signaled an extension of the bipartisanship of World War II into the postwar years.

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Secretary of State George Marshall's Speech (the  transcript of the European Recovery Act/Marshall Plan follows)

I need not tell you gentlemen that the world situation is very serious. That must be apparent to all intelligent people. I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. Furthermore, the people of this country are distant from the troubled areas of the earth and it is hard for them to comprehend the plight and consequent reaction of the long-suffering peoples, and the effect of those reactions on their governments in connection with our efforts to promote peace in the world.

In considering the requirements for the rehabilitation of Europe the physical loss of life, the visible destruction of cities, factories, mines, and railroads was correctly estimated, but it has become obvious during recent months that this visible destruction was probably less serious than the dislocation of the entire fabric of European economy. For the past 10 years, conditions have been highly abnormal. The feverish maintenance of the war effort engulfed all aspects of national economics. Machinery has fallen into disrepair or is entirely obsolete. Under the arbitrary and destructive Nazi rule, virtually every possible enterprise was geared into the German war machine. Long-standing commercial ties, private institutions, banks, insurance companies, and shipping companies disappeared, through the loss of capital, absorption through nationalization, or by simple destruction. In many countries, confidence in the local currency has been severely shaken. The breakdown of the business structure of Europe during the war was complete. Recovery has been seriously retarded by the fact that 2 years after the close of hostilities a peace settlement with Germany and Austria has not been agreed upon. But even given a more prompt solution of these difficult problems, the rehabilitation of the economic structure of Europe quite evidently will require a much longer time and greater effort than had been foreseen.

There is a phase of this matter which is both interesting and serious. The farmer has always produced the foodstuffs to exchange with the city dweller for the other necessities of life. This division of labor is the basis of modern civilization. At the present time, it is threatened with breakdown. The town and city industries are not producing adequate goods to exchange with the food-producing farmer. Raw materials and fuel are in short supply. Machinery is lacking or worn out. The farmer or the peasant cannot find the goods for sale which he desires to purchase. So the sale of his farm produce for money which he cannot use seems to him unprofitable transaction. He, therefore, has withdrawn many fields from crop cultivation and is using them for grazing. He feeds more grain to stock and finds for himself and his family an ample supply of food, however short he may be on clothing and the other ordinary gadgets of civilization. Meanwhile, people in the cities are short of food and fuel. So the governments are forced to use their foreign money and credits to procure these necessities abroad. This process exhausts funds which are urgently needed for reconstruction. Thus a very serious situation is rapidly developing which bodes no good for the world. The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.

The truth of the matter is that Europe's requirements for the next 3 or 4 years of foreign food and other essential products -- principally from America -- are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help, or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character.

The remedy lies in breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole. The manufacturer and the farmer throughout wide areas must be able and willing to exchange their products for currencies the continuing value of which is not open to question.

Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a piecemeal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States Government. Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties, or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.

It is already evident that, before the United States Government can proceed much further in its efforts to alleviate the situation and help start the European world on its way to recovery, there must be some agreement among the countries of Europe as to the requirements of the situation and the part those countries themselves will take in order to give proper effect to whatever action might be undertaken by this Government. It would be neither fitting nor efficacious for this Government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe on its feet economically. This is the business of the Europeans. The initiative, I think, must come from Europe. The role of this country should consist of friendly aid in the drafting of a European program so far as it may be practical for us to do so. The program should be a joint one, agreed to by a number, if not all European nations.

An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied. Political passion and prejudice should have no part. With foresight, and a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibilities which history has clearly placed upon our country, the difficulties I have outlined can and will be overcome.

Transcript of the European Recovery Act/Marshall Plan

Eightieth Congress of the United States of America At the Second Session

Begun and held at the City of Washington on Tuesday, the sixth day of January, one thousand nine hundred and forty-eight

An Act  To promote world peace and the general welfare, national interest, and foreign policy of the United States through economic-financial and other measures necessary to the maintenance of the conditions abroad in which free institutions may survive and consistent with the maintenance of the strength and stability of the United States.

Be it enacted by the Senate and the House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, That this Act may be cited as the "Foreign Assistance Act of 1948".

Sec. 101. This title may be cited as the "Economic Cooperation Act of 1948".

Findings and Declaration of Policy

Sec. 102. (a) Recognizing the intimate economic and other relationships between the United States and the nations of Europe, and recognizing that disruption following in the wake of war is not contained by national frontiers, the Congress finds that the existing situation in Europe endangers the establishment of a lasting peace, the general welfare and national interest of the United States, and the attainment of the objectives of the United Nations. The restoration or maintenance in European countries of principles of individual liberty, free institutions, and genuine independence rests largely upon the establishment of sound economic conditions, stable international economic relationships, and the achievement by the countries of Europe of a healthy economy independent of extraordinary outside assistance. The accomplishment of these objectives calls for a plan of European recovery, open to all such nations which cooperate in such plan, based upon a strong production effort, the expansion of foreign trade, the creation and maintenance of internal financial stability, and the development of economic cooperation, including all possible steps to establish and maintain equitable rates of exchange and to bring about the progressive elimination of trade barriers. Mindful of the advantages the United States has enjoyed through the existence of a large domestic market with no internal trade barriers and believing that similar advantages can accrue to the countries of Europe, it is declared to be the policy of the people of the United States to encourage these ... 

[pages omitted]

Economic Corporation, may deem necessary to carry out the purposes of this title and to improve commercial relations with China. 

Sec. 406. Notwithstanding the provisions of any other law, the Reconstruction Finance Corporation is authorized and directed, until such time as an appropriation is made pursuant to section 404, to make advances, not to exceed in the aggregate $50,000,000, to carry out the provision of this title in such manner and in such amounts as the President shall determine. From appropriations authorized under section 404, there shall be repaid without interest to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation the advances made by it under the authority contained herein. No interest shall be charged on advances made by the Treasury to the Reconstruction Finance Corporation in implementation of this section. 

Sec. 407. (a) The Secretary of State, after consultation with the Administrator, is hereby authorized to conclude an agreement with China establishing a Joint Commission of Rural Reconstruction in China, to be composed of two citizens of the United States appointed by the President of the United States and three citizens of China appointed by the President of China. Such Commission shall, subject to the direction and control of the Administrator, formulate and carry out a program for reconstruction in rural areas of China, which shall include such research and training activities as may be necessary or appropriate for such reconstruction: Provided, That assistance furnished under this section shall not be construed as an express or implied assumption by the United States of any responsibility for making an further contributions to carry out the purposes of this section.

(b) Insofar as practicable, an amount equal to not more than 10 per centum of the funds made available under subsection (a) of section 404 shall be used to carry out the purposes of subsection (a) of this section. Such amount may be in United States dollars proceeds in Chinese currency from the sale of commodities made available to China with funds authorized under subsection (a) of section 404, or both.

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For European Recovery: The Fiftieth Anniversary of the Marshall Plan Online Exhibition

Marshall Announces His Plan

The speech George C. Marshall delivered was drafted by Charles E. Bohlen, a State Department official and future ambassador to the Kremlin. As its basis, he used a memo prepared by a State Department Policy Planning staff directed by Soviet-expert George Kennan as well as reports by other State Department officials. Marshall then prepared the final version.

In the speech Marshall outlined the problem: “Europe's requirements are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character.” He then suggested a solution: that the European nations themselves set up a program for the reconstruction of Europe, with United States assistance. The significance of Marshall's plan was immediately recognized. On June 13, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (1891–1951) predicted that his address “will rank as one of the greatest speeches in world history.”

“Marshall Sees Europe in Need of Vast New U.S. Aid; Urges Self-Help in Reconstruction.” Washington Post , June 6, 1947, pp. 1, Washington Post , June 6, 1947, Page 3. Copyprint from Serial and Government Publications Division, Library of Congress. Used by permission of the Washington Post . All rights reserved. (1) //www.loc.gov/exhibits/marshall/images/washpostp2.jpg ">3 . Copyprint from Serial and Government Publications Division , Library of Congress. Used by permission of the Washington Post . All rights reserved. (1)

Fears of Communist Domination

This cartoon by Edwin Marcus (1885–1961), which appeared in the New York Times on March 14, 1948, comments on the debate in the U.S. Congress over Marshall Plan legislation. Opponents argued that the costs of such a massive program would severely damage the U.S. domestic economy. Those in favor, whose view Marcus presents, maintained that the delay in providing aid to the war-impoverished countries of Europe put them in danger of Soviet domination, represented in the drawing by the Russian bear.

Ultimately events abroad proved more persuasive than even the strongest Marshall Plan supporters. On February 25, 1948, several weeks before the cartoon was published, a Soviet-backed, communist coup took place in Czechoslovakia. American shock at the coup reduced opposition to the Marshall Plan, and Congress finally approved the bill in April 1948, ten months after it was originally proposed.

Edwin Marcus. “ While The Shadow Lengthens ,” New York Times , March 14, 1948. Ink on paper. Prints and Photographs Division , Library of Congress. Used by permission of the Marcus family. All rights reserved (2)

Truman Signs the Economic Assistance Act

Surrounded by members of Congress and his cabinet, on April 3, 1948, President Harry S Truman (1884–1972) signed the Foreign Assistance Act, the legislation establishing the Marshall Plan. His official statement said, “Few presidents have had the opportunity to sign legislation of such importance. . . . This measure is America's answer to the challenge facing the free world today.”

The Marshall Plan was a bipartisan effort—proposed by a Democratic president and enacted into law by a Republican Congress in a hotly contested presidential election year. The plan's supporters shown in the photograph are ( left to right ) Senator Arthur Vandenberg (R—Mich.), Treasury Secretary John Snyder, Representative Charles Eaton (R—N.J.), Senator Tom Connally (D—Tex.), Secretary of the Interior Julius A. Krug, Representative Joseph Martin (R—Mass.), Representative Sol Bloom (D—N.Y.),and Attorney General Tom Clark.

“The President Signs the Economic Assistance Act,” 1948. Copyprint from The Marshall Plan at the Mid-Mark. Averell Harriman Papers, Manuscript Division , Library of Congress (3)

Leaders of the Marshall Plan

On November 29, 1948, President Harry S Truman conferred with the top leaders of the Marshall Plan—( left to right ) George C. Marshall, Paul G. Hoffman (1891–1974), and Averell Harriman (1891–1986). Hoffman was president of the Studebaker automobile corporation when Truman appointed him head of the Economic Cooperation Administration, the agency that operated the Economic Recovery Program (ERP). He was chosen because Congress thought that the ERP could best be run by people with business and financial experience.

Hoffman was a first-rate manager whose tact, persuasiveness, and commitment to ERP goals proved to be valuable assets. Harriman, also an experienced businessman, held the second-most-important post, special representative to the countries participating in the Marshall Plan. Before becoming secretary of commerce in the Truman administration, he had served in two crucial posts during World War II, as Lend-Lease representative in Britain and then as U.S. ambassador to Moscow.

“The Men Responsible.” Copyprint from The Marshall Plan at the Mid-Mark , 1950. Averell Harriman Papers, Manuscript Division , Library of Congress (4)

Marshall Plan Countries

This map shows the countries that were part of the Marshall Plan. Almost all European nations outside the Soviet bloc were members of the plan from the beginning. The two exceptions were Spain, which as a dictatorship under Franco was not invited to participate, and West Germany, which was under Allied occupation and did not become a full member until 1949, after a significant measure of self-government had been restored. Graphs on the map compare agriculture, industry, and foreign-trade levels in 1950, the midpoint of the Marshall Plan, with prewar production in 1938.

After two years of the plan and less than five years after World War II, most of the areas were at or near prewar levels and industrial production was not merely at prewar levels but 15 percent above. The map appears in The Marshall Plan at the Mid-Mark , a hand-made book of photographs documenting progress under the plan that was presented to Averell Harriman, the special representative to the participating countries.

Map from The Marshall Plan at the Mid-Mark , 1950. Averell Harriman Papers, Manuscript Division , Library of Congress (5)

Promoting the Marshall Plan

In July 1947, a nationwide poll showed that 51 percent of Americans had not heard of the Marshall Plan. The Truman Administration consequently launched a massive public relations campaign to educate the American public. Secretary Marshall and other members of the administration made numerous public appearances before civic and trade groups to promote the European aid program.

Privately organized groups were also encouraged to contribute to these efforts to influence public opinion through petitions to Congress and sponsorship of radio broadcasts, articles, and publications. This newspaper supplement produced by the Foreign Policy Association and the Washington Post championed the Marshall Plan during the time its passage was being debated in Congress. These efforts garnered wide public support for the plan.

“This Generation's Chance for Peace.” Washington Post , November 23, 1947, Section VII, p. 1. Copyprint from Serial and Government Publications Division , Library of Congress. Used by permission of the Washington Post . All rights reserved (6)

A Communist Critique of the Marshall Plan

As the Marshall Plan became established, communist opposition grew. Criticism was especially strong in November 1949, after Paul Hoffman, head of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), spoke to the Council of the European Economic Cooperation Association. Addressing the representatives of the countries involved in the Marshall Plan, Hoffman suggested creating a united western European market based on elimination of customs barriers and tariffs.

By promoting European economic integration, the ECA laid the foundation for the founding of the European Economic Community in the 1950s and for today's European Union. The French paper L'Humanité reacted like many other communist publications, claiming that “After disorganizing 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.” In this cartoon from the Soviet paper Izvestiya , Hoffman, shown as a stereotypical fat capitalist, attacks the sovereignty as well as the tariff barriers of Marshall Plan countries with a club of dollars.

“The American Bludgeon in the Solution of Market Problems.” Izvestiya , November 3, 1949. Averell Harriman Papers, Manuscript Division , Library of Congress (7)

Soviet Opposition to the Marshall Plan

This cartoon by Edwin Marcus (1885–1961) refers to opposition to the Marshall Plan by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin (1879–1953), pictured as a basketball player. Stalin regarded the plan's vision of an integrated European market with considerable freedom of movement, goods, services, information, and, inevitably, people, as incompatible with his economic, political, and foreign-policy goals. In June 1947, delegates from France, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union met in Paris to discuss Marshall's proposal.

After several days, Soviet Foreign Minister Vyacheslav M. Molotov walked out, stating that the Soviet government “rejects this plan as totally unsatisfactory.” Viewed by Western leaders as one more refusal to support postwar stabilization efforts, Molotov's action contributed to the growth of Cold War tensions. In addition to declining to participate in the Marshall Plan itself, the Soviet Union prevented the Eastern European countries under its control from taking part. Subsequent Soviet propaganda portrayed the plan as an American plot to subjugate Western Europe.

Edwin Marcus. “ Can He Block It? ” ca. 1947. Ink on paper. Prints and Photographs Division , Library of Congress. Used by permission of the Marcus family. All rights reserved (8)

A Negative View of Aid to Europe

Although the Marshall Plan and other assistance programs were generally admired and considered a success, not every American supported them. In this cartoon, Clarence Batchelor cynically comments on massive U.S. aid to postwar France by showing marchers with dollar coins as heads endlessly marching through Paris's Arc de Triomphe.

“Lafayette, we are here” was a popular phrase among World War I soldiers. It was reportedly coined by General John Pershing (1860–1948) at the tomb of the Marquis de Lafayette during ceremonies on July 4, 1917. U.S. military assistance was viewed as a return for the help that Frenchmen such as Lafayette had rendered during the American Revolution. Batchelor suggests that America's post-World War II aid is an excessive repayment of the old debt.

Clarence Batchelor. “ Endle$$ Proce$$ion ,” ca. 1953. Ink and pencil on paper. Prints and Photographs Division , Library of Congress (9) The Library of Congress does not have permission to display a larger image of this object off-site.

Dutch View of the Marshall Plan

Many European governments produced materials to explain the Marshall Plan to their citizens, such as this booklet printed by the Ministry of Economic Affairs of the Netherlands. The text and artwork are by Jo Spier (1900–1978), a Dutch, Jewish artist and writer who had been imprisoned in a German concentration camp during World War II and who emigrated to the U.S. in 1951.

A note in this English edition states that the original Dutch version, published in November 1949, was distributed to employers and employees, professional groups, teachers, students, and other groups in the Netherlands. It reached 2.5 million readers out of a total population of 10 million, a quarter of the nation.

Jo Spier. The Marshall Plan and You. The Hague, the Netherlands: Ministry of Economic Affairs, 1949, p.5. Averell Harriman Papers, Manuscript Division , Library of Congress. Used by permission of the government of the Netherlands. All rights reserved (10)

Benefits for the U.S. Economy

Because Americans feared that after World War II the financial troubles and unemployment of the 1930s could recur, increasing prosperity in the U.S. was one goal of the Marshall Plan. As a way of boosting exports, the plan had wide appeal to American business people, bankers, workers, and farmers.

Soon after passage of the Foreign Assistance Act, Kiplinger Magazine , a publication for business people, printed a guide to show them how to benefit from the plan. “The Marshall Plan is very much a business plan. . . ,” it concluded. “At its root is an office and factory and warehouse job. The Marshall Plan means work, and you will be one of the workers.” During the years of the Marshall Plan, when much of the money European participants received was spent on U.S.-produced food and manufactured goods, the American economy flourished.

“How to Do Business under the Marshall Plan.” Reprinted from Kiplinger Magazine , Washington, D.C., May 1948, cover. Averell Harriman Papers, Manuscript Division , Library of Congress. Used by permission of Kiplinger Magazine. All rights reserved (11)

Shipping Equipment Abroad Under the Marshall Plan

Congress required that items shipped under the Marshall Plan be clearly marked so that there could be no mistake as to who had supplied the assistance. The original Marshall Plan label, “For European Recovery—Supplied by the United States of America,” was replaced in 1955 with “Strength for the Free World—From the United States of America,” which appears on the jeeps in this photograph.

The new slogan more accurately represented the role of the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA), which had begun operating in the Far East as well as in the original countries of Europe. As the Cold War deepened, the ECA developed beyond the original goal of recovery for Europe and became more concerned with bolstering the free world against communism.

“Marshall Plan Dons Uniform,” 1955. Copyprint. New York World Telegram and Sun Collection. Prints and Photographs Division , Library of Congress (12)

Stuttgart—Before and After the Marshall Plan

When World War II ended in May 1945, Europe was in ruins. Once-fertile fields were scarred by bomb craters and tank tracks. In cities, seas of rubble—an estimated 500 million cubic tons of it in Germany alone—surrounded abandoned, gutted buildings. With factories and businesses destroyed, many people were unemployed. Food was so scarce that millions were on the verge of starvation.

These photographs of Stuttgart, Germany, taken only eight years apart, demonstrate the destruction that existed throughout Europe at the end of the war and how Marshall Plan aid promoted rapid rebuilding. They appear in a booklet intended to inform the American public of Germany's gratitude for U.S. aid and the German government's decision to establish a fund as a memorial to the Marshall Plan, the German Marshall Fund of the United States, on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the plan.

The Marshall Plan and the Future of U.S.—European Relations. New York: German Information Center, 1973, pp. 46–47. General Collections , Library of Congress. Used by permission of the German Information Center. All rights reserved (13)

Establishment of the German Marshall Fund

On June 5, 1972, the twenty-fifth anniversary of the announcement of the Marshall Plan, West German Chancellor Willy Brandt (1913–1992) delivered an address at Harvard University commemorating Marshall's speech. After reviewing the significance of the Marshall Plan and the programs it fostered for European recovery and development, Brandt announced the creation of a Marshall Plan memorial—The German Marshall Fund of the United States.

In his speech, Brandt called the fund “an expression of our special gratitude for the American decision in 1947 not to keep us out.” Financed by the German government but operating independently in the United States, the fund was established to promote American-European study and research projects. It also funds exchange programs for American and German scholars.

“Thanking America,” June 5, 1972, pp. 1–2. Typescript. Averell Harriman Papers, Manuscript Division , Library of Congress (14)

A Danish Celebration of the Marshall Plan

The title of this Danish-produced poster translates as “Peace Without Fear: Security and Cooperation.” The poster was prepared to promote a display Copenhagen. The design incorporates the flags of the Marshall Plan countries, visually demonstrating how the plan fostered international cooperation.

Fred uden frygt: Sikkerhed Gennem Samarbejde. Denmark: I. Chr. Sorensen & Co, ca. 1951. Poster. Gary Yanker Collection. Prints and Photographs Division , Library of Congress (15)

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52c. Containment and the Marshall Plan

Communism was on the march.

When the Red Army marched on Germany, it quickly absorbed the nearby nations Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania into the Soviet Union. Soon communist forces dominated the governments of Romania and Bulgaria . By the fall of 1945, it was clear that the Soviet-backed Lublin regime had complete control of Poland, violating the Yalta promise of free and unfettered elections there. It was only a matter of time before Hungary and Czechoslovakia fell into the Soviet orbit. Yugoslavia had an independent communist leader named Tito .

And now Stalin was ordering the creation of a communist puppet regime in the Soviet sector of occupied Germany. How many dominoes would fall? United States diplomats saw a continent ravaged by war looking for strong leadership and aid of any sort, providing a climate ripe for revolution. Would the Soviets get all of Germany? Or Italy and France? President Truman was determined to reverse this trend.

Greece and Turkey were the first nations spiraling into crisis that had not been directly occupied by the Soviet Army. Both countries were on the verge of being taken over by Soviet-backed guerrilla movements. Truman decided to draw a line in the sand. In March 1947, he asked Congress to appropriate $400 million to send to these two nations in the form of military and economic assistance. Within two years the communist threat had passed, and both nations were comfortably in the western sphere of influence.

A mid-level diplomat in the State Department named George Kennan proposed the policy of containment . Since the American people were weary from war and had no desire to send United States troops into Eastern Europe, rolling back the gains of the Red Army would have been impossible.

But in places where communism threatened to expand, American aid might prevent a takeover. By vigorously pursuing this policy, the United States might be able to contain communism within its current borders. The policy became known as the Truman Doctrine , as the President outlined these intentions with his request for monetary aid for Greece and Turkey.

In the aftermath of WWII, Western Europe lay devastated. The war had ruined crop fields and destroyed infrastructure, leaving most of Europe in dire need. On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall announced the European Recovery Program. To avoid antagonizing the Soviet Union, Marshall announced that the purpose of sending aid to Western Europe was completely humanitarian, and even offered aid to the communist states in the east. Congress approved Truman's request of $17 billion over four years to be sent to Great Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium.

The Marshall Plan created an economic miracle in Western Europe. By the target date of the program four years later, Western European industries were producing twice as much as they had been the year before war broke out. Some Americans grumbled about the costs, but the nation spent more on liquor during the years of the Marshall Plan than they sent overseas to Europe. The aid also produced record levels of trade with American firms, fueling a postwar economic boom in the United States.

Lastly and much to Truman's delight, none of these nations of western Europe faced a serious threat of communist takeover for the duration of the Cold War.

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The Marshall Plan Speech: Rhetoric and Diplomacy

• NSC 68: America’s Cold War Blueprint
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Advisor: Philip Brenner, Professor, School of International Service, American University © 2016 National Humanities Center

Lesson Contents

Teacher’s note.

• Text Analysis & Close Reading Questions

Follow-Up Assignment

• Student Version PDF

What rhetorical and diplomatic challenges did Secretary of State George Marshall face as he delivered his 1947 Marshall Plan speech?

Understanding.

In his “Marshall Plan Speech” of June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall sought to describe the plight of post-War Europe, convince Congress and the American people that it was in the nation’s interest to relieve that plight, assure Europeans that America was not trying to dominate them, and calm the fears of the Soviets while warning them not to interfere with the initiative.

George C. Marshall, 50th United States Secretary of State

Marshall Plan Speech, June 5, 1947, Harvard University (transcript from recording, full text below). To hear a recording, click here .

Speech, historical, informational

Text Complexity

Grade 11-CCR complexity band.

For more information on text complexity see these resources from achievethecore.org .

In the Text Analysis section, Tier 2 vocabulary words are defined in pop-ups, and Tier 3 words are explained in brackets.

Click here for standards and skills for this lesson.

Common Core State Standards

• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.1 (cite evidence to analyze specifically and by inference)
• CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.RI.11-12.6 (determine author’s point of view)

Advanced Placement US History

• Key Concept 8.1 (IA) (…the US developed a foreign policy based on collective security…)

This lesson analyzes the 1947 speech in which Secretary of State George Marshall outlined America’s plan to rebuild Europe after World War II. It is suitable for use in English and history classes. For English teachers it offers a way to study paragraph development, the presentation of evidence, logic, and the structure of persuasive discourse. History teachers will be able to incorporate those topics into an exploration of the history of the Marshall Plan, its purposes, and the diplomacy required to launch it.

The speech roughly follows the classic five-part structure of argumentation — introduction, narrative, argument, rebuttal, conclusion — and we analyze it according to those categories. To keep the lesson to a manageable length, however, we do a close reading of the narrative, argument, and rebuttal sections only. Each one would make an excellent small group assignment. We explore the introduction and the conclusion in brief notes.

This lesson is divided into two parts, a teacher’s guide and a student version, both accessible below. The former includes a background essay, a textual analysis with close reading questions and responses, three interactive exercises, and an optional follow-up assignment. The first interactive exercise explores vocabulary in context; the second and third explore how Marshall deploys evidence. The student version of the lesson, an interactive PDF, includes all of the above, except the responses to the close reading questions and the follow-up assignment.

For a related lesson, see NSC 68: America’s Cold War Blueprint in America in Class ® Lessons.

Teacher’s Guide

Background questions.

• What kind of text are we dealing with?
• When was it written?
• Who wrote it?
• For what audience was it intended?
• For what purpose was it written?

The Marshall Plan, officially known as the European Recovery Program, is generally considered one of, if not the, most successful American foreign policy initiative since World War II. Nonetheless, historians still debate its goals. Was it a mission to relieve suffering, a plan to replicate American-style capitalism in Europe, a stimulus to boost the American economy, a brake to prevent Europe from backsliding into fascism, a strategy to frustrate Soviet expansion, or all of those things? Whatever it was, it was not on America’s diplomatic agenda when World War II ended in 1945.

The War left Europe devastated. People throughout the continent were poor; starvation was widespread. Countries did not have the money to rebuild roads, bridges, factories, and homes. Banks and other financial institutions were in ruins. European nations simply lacked the capacity to rebuild their economies on their own.

By 1947 it had become clear to policy makers in Washington and overseas that something needed to be done to address the plight of Europe. America took its first step in that direction when President Truman persuaded Congress to allocate funds to aid the government of Greece as it fought a civil war against a home-grown Communist resistance. The principle upon which that aid was based came to be known as the Truman Doctrine, a policy under which America pledged to support free peoples who were resisting subjugation by Communists or totalitarian forces.

In the spring of 1947 foreign ministers from Great Britain, the United States, and the Soviet Union met in Moscow to work out solutions to Europe’s economic woes. Secretary of State George Marshall, who had been the Army Chief of Staff during the War, represented the United States. At the conference Marshall became convinced that the Soviets were not interested in solving economic problems but rather were prepared to wait for the war-weakened nations of Europe to collapse and fall under its domination. Shortly after his return to Washington, he delivered a national radio address describing the problems in Europe and calling for immediate action to remedy them. He ordered his policy advisors to develop a plan for such action, and they soon put together a set of recommendations, which became the basis of the Marshall Plan.

Secretary Marshall and President Truman knew that it would not be easy to convince the American people and Congress to come to the aid of Europe, especially to help such a fierce former enemy as Germany. The United States had a long tradition of avoiding entangling relations with other countries. Even though World War II had, to say the least, deeply enmeshed the nation in foreign affairs in Europe and Asia and even though America emerged from the War as the only power capable of world leadership, many Americans still desired to avoid deep involvements abroad. And those Americans had strong allies in Congress, where Republicans held a majority. While the Republicans were split between isolationists and internationalists, even the latter were unlikely to support an aid program estimated to cost about $4 billion per year at a time when the entire federal budget was only $34.5 billion. The Truman administration embarked upon a massive publicity campaign to win both popular and Congressional support for American aid to Europe. Marshall was well-positioned to lead this effort as a revered wartime leader who was not considered a partisan of either political party. His brief speech at the Harvard commencement activities on June 5, 1947, described in simple blunt terms the problems of Europe and a possible solution to them.

While Marshall and his advisors crafted the speech primarily for the American public and for Congress, they had two other audiences in mind. The Plan required the cooperation of the people of Europe. In the speech Marshall sought to demonstrate that he and President Truman understood their plight and stood ready to help. However, he had to assure them that America did not intend to impose a solution but rather would assist in implementing remedies of their own design. Then there was the Soviet Union. The Plan was open to the Soviets, but they refused to participate, denouncing it instead as an American scheme to take over Europe. In his speech Marshall had to reassure the Soviets that the Plan did not threaten them, but he also had to assert that it would go ahead despite their opposition.

The administration’s campaign of persuasion worked. The Economic Cooperation Act of 1948 was signed on April 3 of that year, and the Marshall Plan was underway. Between 1948 and 1951 it cost $13 billion. To put that amount in perspective, in 2015 dollars it would be roughly $131 billion or, over a four-year period, an annual average expenditure of almost $33 billion. For further perspective, consider that, in 2016, the federal government plans to spend $33.7 billion in foreign aid for the entire world. During the years of the Marshall Plan, in today’s dollars, the total federal budget ranged from $316 billion to $449 billion. The current federal budget, at about $4,000 billion ($4 trillion), is roughly ten times larger than it was in 1951. This means that the percentage of the budget devoted to the Marshall Plan each year, around 9%, was far greater than the percentage allocated to all foreign aid today, less than 1%.

Marshall Plan dollars went to reconstruct Europe’s productive capacity, reestablish its financial systems, and restore its faith in industrial capitalism, with a special emphasis on American-style capitalism. They funded projects in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, the United Kingdom, and western Germany. Each country used Marshall Plan support in a different way. Tensions and disagreements often arose between the giver of the aid and its recipients, but by 1950 the stage was set for an economic boom in Western Europe. For his leadership of the plan that bore his name, George Marshall received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1953.

This lesson focuses on Marshall’s Harvard speech, which roughly follows the classic five-part structure of argumentation: introduction, narrative or statement of fact, argument, rebuttal, and conclusion. We explore the introduction and conclusion in brief notes and closely analyze the narrative, argument, and rebuttal, while considering how the speech addressed the concerns of its multiple audiences.

Text Analysis

Introduction.

In an introduction the speaker tries to persuade the audience to like him or her so that they will pay attention to what is being said and agree with it. In addition, the speaker tries to interest the audience in the topic of the speech. The speaker may do this by pointing out how important the topic is or by stating the purpose of the speech. Marshall does all of these things in his first two paragraphs.

He clearly identifies at least one of his audiences, the American public, including the people assembled before him and those who will hear the speech on radio or read about it in newspapers.

In paragraph 1 he tries to win over his listeners by thanking them for the honor of speaking at Harvard and by displaying humility. He is “grateful,” “overwhelmed,” and “fearful” of his abilities to measure up to their expectations. In paragraph 2 he continues to woo the audience by flattering them. That the world situation is serious is apparent to “all intelligent people.” His audience is made up of such people, so he “need not tell” them that the world situation is serious, although, of course, he does. His emphasis on seriousness also signals that his topic is important, and his listeners should pay attention.

He goes on to identify a problem: the public cannot understand the complexity of the world situation because it is overwhelmed by the “mass of facts” presented in the media and because Americans are far removed from those “troubled areas,” the nations of Europe, which are making the world situation serious. Articulating this problem, he identifies the purpose of, at least, the next part of his speech: he is going to explain the world situation. Thus he prepares the audience for the next section of his address, the narrative .

Narrative or Statement of Facts

Close reading questions.

Note: In the narrative a speaker states the facts of his or her case. The speaker tells the audience what they need to know to make sense of the topic.

1. How does Marshall define the problem of Europe in 1947? According to Marshall, Europe’s problem is not chiefly one of physical destruction, a visible problem that can be solved with bricks, mortar, and paint. The problem goes deeper than that. It is, rather, an invisible problem, a failure of the economic system, a breakdown of the networks of trade and commerce, a problem that will require more than new construction. He goes on to illustrate this systemic problem in the next paragraph.

2. What, in Marshall’s view, caused this problem? Essentially, the Nazis. Before World War II European economies were devoted to war preparation, either as allies of the Nazis or as potential enemies. During the conflict itself European economies were devoted to fighting the War.

3. In what sense might it be said that Marshall, in calling for the economic rehabilitation of Europe, is arguing for the final defeat of the Nazis? While the Nazis were no longer a direct threat, the people of Europe were still suffering because of them. Economic rehabilitation would relieve that suffering and finally deliver Europeans from the lingering effects of Nazi domination.

4. The whole of Marshall’s speech is, of course, aimed at his Harvard audience and the American people. Why might the narrative portion of his address also find eager listeners in Europe? Because in describing the plight of Europeans, he is demonstrating that he, and by extension the United States government, understands their suffering and is sympathetic to it. To make his plan work, he will need the trust of the Europeans, and here he begins to his efforts to win it.

Note: Sentences 31 are 32 are pivotal in the speech. In 31 Marshall closes out the narrative. He has dealt with the lack-of-understanding problem from paragraph 2: “Thus (I hope you now understand) a very serious situation is rapidly developing…” Sentence 32 not only summarizes that “very serious situation” but also states a problem. He will devote the next part of speech to outlining his solution to that problem. Thus he moves on to the argument .

Note: The argument is the heart of any piece of persuasive writing. In it the speaker explains why the audience should support a proposition or take an action.

5. What is Marshall arguing for in paragraph 5? He wants America to provide Europe with “substantial additional help.”

6. In paragraph 6 he mentions a “remedy.” To what problem is he referring? The problem he cited at the end of paragraph 4: the danger that the “modern system of the division of labor” might collapse.

7. Thus far Marshall has focused on rebuilding the productive capacity of Europe — roads, factories, etc. — how, in paragraph 6, does he redefine the goal of American aid? Now the purpose is to restore the confidence of Europeans in the “economic future of their own countries.”

8. What arguments does he make to support his plan in paragraph 7? Failing to rescue Europe will demoralize the world, invite “disturbances,” and damage the American economy.

9. At what audiences does Marshall aim this portion of his speech? In this part of the speech he has moved from defining the problem to telling both the American and the European publics what the United States plans to do about it. Moreover, here he introduces the political consequences of inaction, which could be construed as an implicit warning to isolationists in Congress.

Note: Marshall knows that people at home and abroad will oppose his plan. To be persuasive, he must anticipate objections and address them, and he does that in the next section of his speech, the rebuttal .

Paragraph 7 [36] Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. [37] It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.

Note: In a rebuttal the speaker acknowledges opposing views or criticisms and argues against them. A speaker who fails to do so would offer a weak, incomplete, and unconvincing case.

10. Why would Marshall say that his policy is aimed “not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos”? This removes his plan from the realm of ideology and frames it as a humanitarian initiative open to all European nations, including the Soviet Union.

11. What does Marshall mean when he says that American assistance must be a “cure rather than a mere palliative”? He envisions the American aid program not simply as a measure designed to get Europe over the immediate difficulties of post-war readjustment but rather as fundamental and permanent change that will set Europe on a course toward long-term economic prosperity.

12. Marshall issues warnings in paragraphs 8 and 9. Cite the language of his warnings. “Any government which maneuvers… will encounter the opposition of the United States.” “Furthermore, governments, political parties or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery… will encounter the opposition of the United States.”

13. Who is the audience for this warning? The Soviet Union.

14. How does Marshall avoid the charge that the United States is trying to impose its will upon Europe? He says that it would not be “fitting” or “efficacious” for the US to draw up a relief program for Europe. “This,” he explicitly asserts, “is the business of Europe.” The US can be a friend and supporter, but the nations of Europe must take the first step. In paragraph 9 he also says that participation in the program must be voluntary.

15. In his rebuttal Marshall does not state the criticisms he refutes, rather he implies them. Just as he anticipated criticism from foreign countries in paragraphs 8, 9, and 10, in paragraph 11 he anticipates criticism from his own country. What critics do you think he is addressing? He is aiming this rebuttal at isolationists in Congress and elsewhere who would argue that America should not get involved in foreign affairs and who would enflame heated political opposition to his proposal.

16. Cite the language Marshall uses to address American critics. “Political passion and prejudice should have no part.”

17. What does Marshall call upon the American people to do? We want Americans to understand the problem and the remedies. He is asking them to approach this situation through reason rather than emotion.

18. What does Marshall mean when he says that history has placed a “vast responsibility” upon America? He is alluding to the fact that the United States is the only major industrial power to have survived World War II in possession of a fully functioning economy and as such has a responsibility to assume leadership in world affairs.

Note: At this point Marshall is prepared to move to the final section of his speech, the conclusion .

Paragraph 10 [45] It is already evident that, before the United States Government can proceed much further in its efforts to alleviate the situation and help start the European world on its way to recovery, there must be some agreement among the countries of Europe as to the requirements of the situation and the part those countries themselves will take in order to give proper effect to whatever action might be undertaken by this Government. [46] It would be neither fitting nor efficacious for our Government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe on its feet economically. [47] This is the business of the Europeans. [48] The initiative I think, must come from Europe. The role of this country should consist of friendly aid in the drafting of a European program and of later support of such a program so far as it may be practical for us to do so. The program should be a joint one, agreed to by a number, if not all, European nations.

Paragraph 11 [49] An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied. [50] Political passion and prejudice should have no part. [51] With foresight , and a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibility which history has clearly placed upon our country, the difficulties I have outlined can and will be overcome.

The conclusion of a speech is important because it presents the final words an audience hears, which often linger and shape the impression of an entire speech. Traditionally, speakers use conclusions to do four things:

• leave the audience with a favorable opinion,
• emphasize key points,
• stimulate an appropriate emotional response,
• summarize the argument.

In his conclusion Marshall does not have to worry about leaving a favorable opinion: he was one of the most highly regarded national leaders in 1947. (From the applause we hear in the recording of the speech, it is clear that the audience liked him and what he said.) He does, however, emphasize important points: that Americans must understand the complex situation in Europe, that the future depends upon rebuilding of Europe, and that Americans must make decisions about Europe based on reason and calm judgment.

Moreover, through the use of rhetorical questions, questions raised without the expectation of an answer, he summarizes his entire speech:

• What are the reactions of the people [of Europe]? (Desperation)
• What are the justifications of those reactions ? (Economic collapse)
• What are the sufferings [of the Europeans]? (Poverty and starvation)
• What is needed ? (Restoration of the European economy and confidence in the future)
• What can best be done ? (American aid)
• What must be done ? (Americans must agree to supply aid)

This is a particularly effective concluding strategy because, as Marshall says twice in the speech, he wants Americans to think about and understand the conditions in Europe so that they can make decisions based on reason. His questions at the end provoke thought rather than emotion. This comports with his overall avoidance of any sort of emotional appeal in the speech.

Ask your students to watch the eleven-minute film “ The Marshall Plan at Work ” (1950) from the German Historical Museum and have them respond to the following questions, either in discussion or in writing.

• How does the film portray post-War Germany?
• How does the film answer the question, why rebuild Germany?
• How does the film reflect the European economic problems Secretary of State Marshall outlined in his Harvard Commencement speech?
• How does the film portray the Marshall Plan as an anti-Soviet measure?
• Why did the Marshall Plan support farmers?
• Does the film portray the Marshall Plan as chiefly an economic or humanitarian endeavor?

Vocabulary Pop-Ups

• compliment: expression of honor
• accorded: given
• appraisement: judgment
• fabric: underlying framework
• feverish: intensely active
• engulfed: overwhelmed
• obsolete: old-fashioned
• arbitrary: unrestrained by law
• nationalization: takeover by government
• bodes: predicts
• deterioration: fall into ruin
• demoralizing: discouraging
• piecemeal: partial
• palliative: easing of symptoms
• maneuvers: moves
• alleviate: relieve
• efficacious: effective
• unilaterally: on its own
• initiative: first step
• foresight: prudence
• George C. Marshall, “The Marshall Plan Speech,” June 5, 1947. Harvard University, Boston, Massachusetts. http://marshallfoundation.org/marshall/the-marshall-plan/marshall-plan-speech
• “George C. Marshall, U.S. Secretary of State, January 21, 1947 to January 20, 1949,” photograph, U.S. Department of State. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:George_C._Marshall,_U.S._Secretary_of_State.jpg
• “Marshall Plan Payments in Millions to European Economic Cooperation Countries, from April 3, 1948 to June 30, 1952,” color chart, The George C. Marshall Foundation. http://marshallfoundation.org/library/documents/marshall-plan-payments-millions-european-economic-cooperation-countries

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Love Beyond Bars: Miguel and Silvia

While miguel solorio did 25 years for a crime he didn’t commit, his wife, silvia, was right by his side. here’s their california love story in pictures..

In 1998, at the age of 19, Miguel Solorio was arrested for the murder of an elderly woman who was shot during a gang-related drive-by in Whittier, California . In a case plagued by flawed eyewitness identifications and police perjury, he was convicted of murder and assault and sentenced to life without parole two years later.

Over the next two decades , Solorio fought the wrongful conviction: He filed (unsuccessful) appeals. He built a relationship with a state public defender, who would eventually represent him pro bono. He worked with multiple innocence projects in the state. And Solorio’s wife, Silvia, did her part, working with his family and legal team, and even obtaining a statement from a woman who might have pointed police to another suspect.

In July 2023, with new evidence in hand, lawyers from the Northern California Innocence Project filed the state writ of habeas corpus that would set Solorio free. He walked out of Mule Creek State Prison that November, at age 44.

In this first installment of our new series, “Love Beyond Bars,” Miguel describes the visit with Silvia that almost made him forget he was in prison.

Miguel and Silvia have hundreds, if not thousands, of photographs from their prison visits. Silvia has kept almost all of the photos.

S ilvia and I started dating nine months before my arrest, but my love was genuine from the gate. With her, I felt an instant connection. The words “I love you” just came out naturally.

We got married at Calipatria State Prison back in 2004, surrounded by friends and family. She drove to the prison to see me every weekend, but it wasn’t until 2019 that we had our first family visit, at Mule Creek State Prison. On family visits, you stay in a little miniature apartment from Friday to Monday. You can almost forget that you’re in prison.

For the first time, we got to act like a normal married couple. We were able to cook for each other, with food from an outside grocery store. There were fresh vegetables, like tomatoes and bell peppers, but I ate so many chicken nuggets I made myself sick. Silvia told me to slow down, but I didn’t listen. She couldn’t really blame me.

We got to watch movies together, dance together. They had a little radio, and we listened to oldies, blues and rap music. I remember one song’s lyrics, “I’ll testify for you.”

Now that I’ve been exonerated, every day is like that. Because of Silvia, I know that life is precious, and I don’t take it for granted.

Silvia and Miguel attend a Jehovah’s Witnesses service online on a Sunday morning. Silvia converted while Miguel was incarcerated because she felt that the congregation was the family she needed for support. The group welcomed Miguel when he was released.

Miguel’s marriage vows to Silvia. The couple wed on September 25, 2004. Silvia has kept the vows in her wallet for the past 20 years.

Silvia and Miguel share a funnel cake, one of Silvia’s favorite desserts.

Camille Farrah Lenain is a French-Algerian documentary photographer who grew up in Paris. She relocated to New Orleans in 2013. Her photographs have been exhibited internationally, including at the Ogden Museum of Southern Art, the Arab World Institute, Photoville and Les Rencontres d'Arles.

Carla Canning is an engagement journalist and contract editor at Prison Journalism Project. She previously worked on Life Inside as The Marshall Project's Tow audience engagement fellow. At the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism, she created a website guide for people visiting loved ones incarcerated in New York State prisons.

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