The Marshall Plan and the Lesson of History 741proposal UN inspectors operating without restriction
anywhere in the world would ensure that no country
made bombs clandestinely. When, at an unspecified
date, the system was established successfully, the
United States would destroy its stockpile of bombs.
Most Americans thought the Baruch plan mag-
nanimous, and some considered it positively fool-
hardy, but the Soviets rejected it. They would neither
permit UN inspectors in the Soviet Union nor sur-
render the Soviet Union’s veto power over Security
Council actions dealing with atomic energy. They
demanded that the United States destroy its bombs
at once. American leaders did not comply; they
believed that the atom bomb would be, in Baruch’s
words, their “winning weapon” for years to come.
Exactly how it would be used, no one could say.
Duck and Coveratwww.myhistorylab.comA Turning Point in Greece
The strategy of containment began to take shape
early in 1947 as a result of a crisis in Greece. Greek
communists, waging a guerrilla war against the
monarchy, were receiving aid from communist
Yugoslavia and Bulgaria. Great Britain had been
assisting the monarchists but could no longer afford
this drain on its resources. In February 1947 the
British informed President Truman that they would
cut off aid to Greece.
The British predicament forced American policy-
makers to confront the fact that their European allies
had not been able to rebuild their war-weakened
economies. The communist “Iron Curtain” (a phrase
coined by Winston Churchill) seemed about to fall
down on another nation. That the Soviet Union was
actually discouraging the rebels out of fear of
American intervention in the area the policymakers
ignored. As Undersecretary of State Dean Acheson
put it, the “corruption” of Greece might “infect” the
entire Middle East and then spread through Asia
Minor and Egypt to Italy and France.
Truman therefore asked Congress to approve
what became known as the Truman Doctrine. If
Greece or Turkey fell to the communists, he said, all
of the Middle East might be lost. To prevent this
“unspeakable tragedy,” he asked for $400 million in
military and economic aid to Greece and Turkey. “It
must be the policy of the United States to support
free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation
by armed minorities or by outside pressures,” he said.
By exaggerating the consequences of inaction and
by justifying his request on ideological grounds,
Truman obtained his objective. The result was the
establishment of a right-wing, military-dominated
government in Greece. In addition, by not limiting his
request to the specific problem posed by the situation
WatchtheVideoin Greece, Truman caused considerable concern in
many countries.
The threat to Western Europe certainly loomed
large in 1947. With the region, in the words of Winston
Churchill (the great phrase-maker of the era), “a rubble-
heap, a charnel house, a breeding-ground of pestilence
and hate,” the entire continent seemed in danger of
falling into communist hands without the Soviet Union
raising a finger.
Truman Doctrine, 1947at
http://www.myhistorylab.comThe Marshall Plan and the Lesson of History
In a 1946 speech entitled “The Lesson of History,”
George C. Marshall, army chief of staff during World
War II, reminded Americans that their isolationism had
contributed to Hitler’s unchecked early aggression. This
time, Marshall noted, the people of the United States
must be prepared to act against foreign aggressors. In
1947 Marshall was named secretary of state. He out-
lined an extraordinary plan by which the United States
would finance the reconstruction of the European econ-
omy. “Hunger, poverty, desperation, and chaos” were
the real enemies of freedom and democracy, Marshall
said. The need was to restore “the confidence of the
European people in the economic future of their own
countries.” Even the Soviet Union and Soviet-bloc
nations would be eligible for American aid.
The European powers eagerly seized upon what
became known as the Marshall Plan, a massive infu-
sion of American aid to rebuild Europe after World
War II. European leaders set up a sixteen-nation
Committee for European Economic Cooperation,
which soon submitted plans calling for up to $22.4 bil-
lion in American assistance.
The Soviet Union and its European satellites
were tempted by the offer and sent representatives to
the initial planning meetings. But Stalin grew anxious
that his satellite states would be drawn into the orbit
of the United States. He recalled his delegates and
demanded that Soviet bloc nations do likewise. Those
who hesitated were ordered to report to the Kremlin.
“I went to Moscow as the Foreign Minister of an
independent sovereign state,” Jan Masaryk of
Czechoslovakia commented bitterly. “I returned as a
lackey of the Soviet government.”
In February 1948 a communist coup took over
the Czechoslovak government; Masaryk fell (or more
likely was pushed) out a window to his death. These
strong-arm tactics brought to mind the Nazi takeover
of Czechoslovakia a decade earlier and helped per-
suade Congress to appropriate over $13 billion for
the Marshall aid program. Results exceeded all expec-
tations. By 1951 Western Europe was booming.ReadtheDocument