TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century

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<text> <title> (1940s) Marshall Plan </title> <history> TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1940s Highlights </history> <link 05102> <link 00112><article> <source>Time Magazine</source> <hdr> Marshall Plan </hdr> <body> [By 1947, the U.S. could more easily spare food for a continent that was still very close to starvation. But President Truman and his new Secretary of State, George Marshall, were beginning to recognize that in the longer term, just filling bellies was not going to be enough. American aid to help them resist the spread of Communism was called for. Truman spelled out his doctrine of aid for countries directly imperiled by Communism. But beyond that, Truman and Marshall considered a larger, more ambitious plan for economic recovery that would build up Europe's productive capacity, increase its prosperity and--not coincidentally--help insulate it against Communism.] (May 19, 1947) The Administration warily hinted at a further expansion of its foreign policy. Secretary of State Marshall wrote: "Enduring political harmony rests heavily upon economic stability." What Marshall meant was that the pressing struggle between communism and Western Democracy was not on a military plane or even (except as a means to an end) on an ideological level. It was a struggle between the U.S. and economic anarchy--a war which the U.S. must wage with good and fuel. On the outcome of that struggle depended the survival of the democratic world and the world's future. It was not only the world's prime ministers and premiers who turned to the U.S. The young turned their pinched and inquiring faces westward. If the U.S. failed them, their faces would turn toward Moscow. (June 30, 1947) "When the Marshall proposals were announced," said Ernie Bevin in Britain last week, "I grabbed them with both hands." So did Europe. As for the Russians, they seemed to be in a box, for once. If they joined Britain, France, and the rest of Europe in really working for a continental recovery plan, they would be conforming to U.S. initiative; if they stalled and sabotaged, the responsibility for a divided and impoverished Europe would fall clearly on the Kremlin. Europe had a chance to work out a blueprint of how the U.S. could save Europe whole--which would cost the U.S. much less than trying to save it piece by piece. Economic conferences would start immediately. Moscow, after some confusion, decided to pull up for a closer look. The Russians complained that they did not know what the Marshall plan meant--or what Bevin and Bidault had been up to--but they agreed to a British-French-Russian exploratory conference in Paris, this week. (July 7, 1947) An American farmer viewed the world beyond the flat horizon and said: "We can't feed the whole world. I don't mind sending them some food when they are hungry, but I'm beginning to wonder whether they work as hard in their fields as I do." The farmer had missed the point of the Marshall Plan. In the long run, it was not designed to send food to the Europeans, but tractors and other things which would permit Europeans to work harder and produce more. That is why the Marshall Plan had galvanized the hopes of a continent that had almost forgotten how to hope. For those nations which wanted to take part, the U.S. could push the Marshall Plan ahead without Russia. Eastern European nations would be forced by Russia to stay out. If western and central Europe recovered more rapidly, eastern Europeans would not thank Russia for blocking their recovery. [Committees of European delegates, meeting in the summer of 1947, determined how the Marshall Plan aid would be allocated and what specific requests they would make. Their shopping list: $20.4 billion in food and materials from the U.S. in four years, including $5.4 billion worth of food and fertilizer, $700 million worth of coal, $500 million worth of petroleum, $400 million worth of iron and steel, $400 million worth of timber. Congress passed the program in April 1948, and Paul Hoffman, president of Studebaker Corp., was named its administrator. After one year, the European Cooperation Administration, as it was called, was an astounding and heartening success.] (April 11, 1949) ECA was one year and $5 billion old. "America's answer to the challenge facing the free world!"--so President Harry Truman had trumpeted at its birth in April 1948. In a tremendous twelve month, ECA had primed the pump of European recovery, pushed ahead through Communist attacks and sabotage, plucked 270 million people from the brink of chaos and despair. By all this it had added immeasurably to the chances of the U.S. and the world for enduring peace and prosperity. In the words of its chief, ECA Administrator Paul Gray Hoffman, it was on the way to proving itself "the best bargain the American people ever bought." ECA had helped France off the bread ration, cranked her textile and electrical industries into booming production. It was rebuilding rail transport, curbing black markets and inflation through fiscal reform and more production, filling the shops with goods again. Thanks to ECAid, Holland's Rotterdam was getting steel for new docks, cranes, sheds, bridges. Norway's fishermen had new nets from yarn spun in Italy out of cotton from the U.S. Danish stockmen had more fodder corn and oil cake; they could produce more bacon and butter for Britain and other customers. Western Germany, in contrast to the first three postwar years of hunger and desolation, looked almost prosperous again. Factory chimneys belched smoke as Volkswagen and Opels, Rolleiflexes and Leicas, steel girders and Rosenthal china flowed from production lines. Pneumatic hammers chattered as new buildings rose from the ruins of Munich, Frankfurt and Dusseldorf. </body> </article> </text>