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Marshall Plan
Chapter section from:
Airbridge to Berlin --- The Berlin Crisis of 1948, its Origins and Aftermath
By D.M. Giangreco and Robert E. Griffin
© 1988
(Used with permission)
In hindsight, passage of the European Recovery Program of 1948, or Marshall Plan, seems almost a miraculous event. It was launched by the administration of an unelected, "lame duck" president whose loss of the upcoming election
appeared to be such a virtual certainty that both press and politicians openly talked about his administration being "scheduled" to leave office in 1949. Indeed, President Harry S Truman's personal popularity was perceived to be so low by his own party that he was actually pressed not to assist in the congressional campaign of 1946.
A recovery program of continental dimensions, the Marshall Plan expended more than $12.5 billion (equivalent to roughly $60 billion today) at a time when:
- a worried Pentagon, virtually disarmed by postwar budget cuts, was making a solid case for increasing funding.
- numerous domestic agencies were, with heavy congressional support, clamoring for enlarged welfare programs.
- the US Treasury Department was intent on building upon the existing budget surpluses.
- the president's party did not hold a majority in either house of Congress.
That the Marshall Plan became a reality was due to the energetic efforts of many individuals: the Republican chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Arthur H. Vandenberg; British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin; eminent Republicans Henry L. Stimson and Robert Patterson who had both become secretaries of war under Roosevelt; Truman himself; and, of course, Secretary of State George C. Marshall, a man venerated by Truman as being "the greatest living American." Curiously, Joseph Stalin was also a key figure behind the passage of the Marshall Plan and Truman once remarked that without his "crazy" moves, "we never would have had our foreign policy. . .we never could have got a thing from Congress."
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