Marshall Plan Commemorative Section: The European Response: Primacy of Politics

David Reynolds

From Foreign Affairs, May/ June 1997

Summary:  A look back at perhaps the most important foreign policy success of the postwar period. Edited by Peter Grose, with contributions by historians Diane B. Kunz and David Reynolds, a memoir by Charles P. Kindleberger, a profile of Marshall and Acheson by James Chace and one of Will Clayton by Gregory Fossedal and Bill Mikhail. And reflections from Roy Jenkins, Walt Rostow, and Helmut Schmidt.

David Reynolds is a Fellow of Christ's College at Cambridge University and author of two prize-winning books on World War II: The Creation of the Anglo-American Alliance, 1937-1941, and Rich Relations: The American Occupation of Britain, 1942-1945.

"The initiative, I think, must come from Europe." That was the crux of George Marshall's speech at Harvard on June 5, 1947. Only if the Europeans helped themselves could the Truman administration persuade Congress and the American public that Europe was worth helping, and only a plan designed by Europeans for the rebuilding of their continent would promote Washington's larger goal of European integration while avoiding the impression that America had dictated the terms of the project. But who were the Europeans, and how should their problems and needs be defined? The transatlantic debate on these questions between 1947 and 1950 determined the shape and fate of Europe for half a century.

To appreciate the significance of the Marshall Plan, we must shed the assumption that the Cold War outlines of Europe were already clear in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of Hitler's Third Reich. Although Winston Churchill privately wrote of the "iron curtain" to Truman in May 1945 and popularized the term the following March in a speech at Westminster College in Fulton, Missouri, Europe was not yet irrevocably polarized. The whole continent had swung leftward, blurring any rigid ideological lines between the communist and capitalist worlds. The success of left-wing parties in postwar elections made clear that Europe's experiences in the depression of the 1930s and the war that followed had discredited capitalism as well as fascism. In Eastern Europe peasant and socialist parties cooperated with communists to redistribute land and bring heavy industry under government control. Further west, the Labour Party surged to power in Britain, social democrats predominated in Norway and Sweden, and center-left coalitions, including the communists who had been in the vanguard of wartime resistance, governed France, Italy, and Belgium. Europeans viewed the United States as the epitome of unreconstructed capitalism: in February 1946 Ernest Bevin, the British foreign secretary, spoke of Britain as "the last bastion of social democracy . . . against the red tooth and claw of American capitalism and the Communist dictatorship of Soviet Russia." Western Europeans remained skeptical of American diplomacy, remembering how Woodrow Wilson's crusading internationalism had degenerated into economic nationalism and political isolation after the previous world war.

Many in Europe hankered after a "third force" strategy that would avoid close alignment with either of the new superpowers. American aid had been available after the war on a bilateral basis to countries ranging from France to Poland. But then came Marshall's promise of more comprehensive aid if "Europe" would define its collective needs, and the offer forced the Europeans to choose sides. Over the next month, critical decisions in Paris, London, and Moscow determined the geographical scope of the Marshall Plan -- and the postwar cast of international politics.

DIVIDING THE CONTINENT

France was among Washington's principal anxieties. Essential commodities such as wheat could be purchased only from the United States, and the French lacked the dollar or gold reserves to acquire them. With the communists polling a quarter of the French vote, Washington feared that continued economic distress would play directly into Moscow's hands, and in May 1947 French Premier Paul Ramadier and Italian Prime Minister Alcide de Gasperi were both trying to construct new coalitions without the communists. Although Italy was in a similar situation to France both economically and politically, it was an underdeveloped former enemy, still striving to regain its sovereignty after the war. France, by contrast, remained among the most powerful nations in Europe and was one of the four occupiers of the defeated Germany. Any effort to help Europe recover from the devastation of the war would have to center around France and take account of its objectives and aspirations.

As after the First World War, France aimed to restrict Germany's recovery and divert its resources, particularly coal from the Ruhr and Saar regions, for the benefit of French industry. Yet Washington saw Germany's economic revival as vital to the health of Europe and was determined to overcome France's opposition. Resolving this deadlock would be a critical issue in the months ahead. But France also offered a more positive contribution to the recovery effort. Although the modernization plan approved by the French cabinet in January 1947 and named for its architect Jean Monnet was not entirely to America's liking, its bold concept of directing capital and resources to a few key sectors, like coal, electricity, and steel, paralleled thinking in Washington. A few days after his famous speech, Marshall noted that the program might be "somewhat along [the] lines [of the] Monnet Plan but on [a] much larger scale involving several countries."

If not for British initiative and support, however, the Marshall Plan might not have come to fruition. It remains a hallowed British myth that only Foreign Secretary Bevin grasped the importance of Marshall's speech, primed not by his officials but by a BBC broadcast. In fact, the Foreign Office expected a novel, large-scale U.S. aid proposal and knew that steps toward integration of the Western European economies were likely to be required. But Whitehall did not take up the Harvard speech itself as urgently as did Bevin. Indeed, the speech was vague -- deliberately so -- but it had implied that specifics would follow in public or should be elicited in private. Bevin, however, was a former union leader with a healthy skepticism for protocol, and he swung into action the next morning. "I never asked him for particulars," he told the House of Commons on June 19. "I said to myself at once -- and the Cabinet agreed immediately -- 'It is up to us to tell them what we want; it is up to us to produce the plan.'"

Bevin's rapid response had two important consequences. First, Britain took a leading role in the Marshall Plan right from the start. Marshall had left the boundaries of "Europe" undefined, and an earlier influential memo by George Kennan's Policy Planning Staff had implied that a plan for Britain's economic problems might be separate from, though linked with, the overall European program. Had the British taken the time to clarify Marshall's intent, the plan might have been shaped primarily by France. Second, Bevin's initiative strengthened the hand of those in Paris favoring a decisive French response. Although the French foreign minister, Georges Bidault, was ready to risk an open breach with Moscow, other policymakers, including Paul Ramadier and President Vincent Auriol, were more hesitant. While the Soviets continued to dangle the offer of a common punitive policy toward Germany, they feared that the acceptance of American aid might inflame the French left. Bevin's early involvement gave Bidault valuable support in the internal French struggle about whether to rely on the "Anglo-Saxons" who had failed them so conspicuously after the Great War.

France and Britain were both, therefore, at the head of the European reaction to Marshall's speech. Through prior leaks to their embassy in Washington, the French were at least as well prepared as the British, and Paris was the first to submit a formal proposal to the United States just eight days later. Although ready for consultation with London, Bidault was privately "not too happy" when Bevin made a public gesture by deciding to fly to Paris on June 17. The American ambassador in Paris told Marshall that "Bidault wanted to steal the show and Bevin beat him by a day or two." Bevin's high-profile move helped ensure that when Under Secretary for Economic Affairs, Will Clayton, came to Europe in late June, his main talks were in London, not Paris.

Bidault extracted from Bevin two important concessions. First, the upcoming conference would be held in Paris rather than London, and second, any invitation to the rest of Europe would include the Soviets. Neither Bevin nor Bidault wanted Soviet participation, but the invitation was vital for French domestic politics; in return the British foreign secretary secured a firm commitment from his French counterpart that they would go ahead even if Moscow delayed or opposed their action. Despite their rivalry, Bevin and Bidault shared a determination to keep the recovery program in their hands. They envisaged a series of technical committees to deal with requirements such as transport, energy, and food, supervised by an executive committee controlled by their two countries. In this way they hoped to minimize the integrationist thrust of Marshall's speech and keep the smaller European states in line. In the months ahead, many battles would be fought along these two fronts.