During the winter of 1946-47, the worst in memory, Europe seemed on the verge

of collapse. For the victors in World War II, there were no spoils. In London, coal

shortages left only enough fuel to heat and light homes for a few hours a day. In

Berlin, the vanquished were freezing and starving to death. On the walls of the

bombed-out Reichstag, someone scrawled "Blessed are the dead, for their hands

do not freeze." European cities were seas of rubble--500 million cubic yards of it

in Germany alone. Bridges were broken, canals were choked, rails were twisted.

Across the Continent, darkness was rising. Americans, for the most part,

were not paying much attention. Having won World War II, "most Americans just

wanted to go to the movies and drink Coca-Cola," said Averell Harriman, who had

been FDR's special envoy to London and Moscow during the second world war.

But in Washington and New York, a small group of men feared the worst. Most of

them were, like Harriman, Wall Street bankers and diplomats with close ties to

Europe and a long view of America's role in the world. They suspected that in the

Kremlin, Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin was waiting like a vulture. Only the United

States, they believed, could save Europe from chaos and communism.

With sureness of purpose, some luck and a little convincing, these men

persuaded Congress to help rescue Europe with $13.3 billion in economic

assistance over three years. That sum--more than $100 billion in today's dollars, or

about six times what America now spends annually on foreign aid--seems

unthinkable today. The European Recovery Program, better known as the Marshall

Plan, was an extraordinary act of strategic generosity. How a few policymakers

persuaded their countrymen to pony up for the sake of others is a tale of low

politics and high vision

Yet their achievement is recalled by many scholars as a historical blip, a

moment of virtue before the cold war really locked in. A truer, if more

grandiloquent, assessment was made by Winston Churchill. The Marshall Plan,

said England's war leader from his retirement, was "the most unsordid act in

history."

It was, at the time, a very hard sell. The men who wanted to save

Europe--Harriman, Under Secretary of State Dean Acheson, diplomats like George

Kennan--were unelected and for the most part unknown. They needed a hero, a

brand name respected by ordinary Americans. They turned to George C. Marshall.

His name would bring blank stares from schoolchildren today, but

Marshall, the army's highest-ranking general in World War II, was widely regarded

then as the Organizer of Victory. "He is the great one of the age," said President

Harry Truman, who made Marshall secretary of state in January 1947. Upright,

cool to the point of asperity ("I have no feelings," he said, "except those I reserve

for Mrs. Marshall"), Marshall made worshipers of his followers. Dean Acheson

described his boss walking into a room: "Everyone felt his presence. It was a

striking and communicated force. His figure conveyed intensity, which his voice,

low, staccato and incisive, reinforced. It compelled respect. It spread a sense of

authority and calm." Though self-effacing and not prone to speechifying, Marshall

used a few basic maxims. One was "Don't fight the problem. Decide it."

Without hesitation, Marshall gave his name and authority to the plan to

rescue Europe. His only advice to the policymakers: "Avoid trivia." The unveiling

came in a commencement speech at Harvard on June 5, 1947. Wearing a plain

business suit amid the colorful academic robes, Marshall was typically

plain-spoken and direct: "Our policy," he said, "is not directed against any country

or doctrine, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos."

The response in the american press was tepid, but the leaders of Europe

were electrified. Listening to the address on the BBC, British Foreign Minister

Ernest Bevin regarded Marshall's speech as a "lifeline to a sinking man." Bevin

immediately headed for Paris to urge the French to join him in grabbing the rope.

Marshall did not want Washington to appear to be dictating to its allies.

"The initiative, I think, must come from Europe," he had said at Harvard. But the

Europeans fell to squabbling. The French, in particular, were wary of reviving

Germany. "The Plan? There is no plan," grumbled George Kennan, the diplomat

sent to Paris that summer of 1947 to monitor the talks. The Europeans were able to

write shopping lists, but nothing resembling an overall program. In a cable to

Marshall, Kennan predicted that the United States would listen, "but in the end, we

would not ask them, we would just tell them what they would get."

First, however, Marshall's men had to persuade Congress to provide the

money. In October, President Truman tried to appeal to America's sense of

sacrifice, urging Americans to eat less chicken and fewer eggs so there would be

food for starving Europeans. Urged to "waste not," some schoolchildren formed

"clean-plate clubs," but that was about as far as the sacrificial zeal went. Members

of Congress were profoundly wary. Bob Lovett, another Wall Streeter who

replaced Acheson in the summer of 1947 as under secretary, managed to win over

Senate Foreign Relations Committee chairman Arthur Vandenberg, mostly by

feeding him top-secret cables over martinis at cocktails every night. But many

lawmakers regarded foreign aid as "Operation Rathole," and viewed the rescue

plan slowly taking shape at the State Department as a "socialist blueprint." Said

Charles Halleck, the Republican leader in the House: "I've been outon the

hustings, and I know, the people don't like it."

Clearly, appealing to good will was not going to suffice. It was necessary,

then, to scare the voters and their elected representatives. As it happened, Russia

growled at just the right moment. In the winter of 1948, Moscow cracked down on

its new satellite state of Czechoslovakia. Jan Masaryk, the pro-Western foreign

minister, fell--or was pushed--to his death from his office window in Prague. At

the Pentagon, the generals worried that Soviet tanks could begin to roll into

Western Europe at any moment. The atmosphere in Washington, wrote Joseph and

Stewart Alsop, the hawkish establishment columnists, was no longer "post-war." It

was now "pre-war."

In fact, the fears of Soviet invasion were exaggerated. We now know that

after World War II the Red Army began tearing up railroad tracks in Eastern

Europe because Stalin feared an attack by the West against the Soviet Union.

Exhausted by a war that cost the lives of 20 million Russians, the Kremlin was not

ready to wage another. Because of poor intelligence, Washington did not fully

appreciate Russia's weakness. Top policymakers were aware, however, that the

hysteria was exaggerated, that war was unlikely. Even so, they were not above

using scare tactics in a good cause--like winning congressional approval of the

Marshall Plan. Sometimes, said Acheson, "it is necessary to make things clearer

than the truth."

Frightened by the talk of war, urged to recall that isolationism after World

War I succeeded only in producing World War II, Congress waved through the

European Recovery Plan that spring. In April the SS John H. Quick sailed from

Galveston, Texas, with 19,000 tons of wheat. Before long, there were 150 ships

every day carrying food and fuel to Europe. There were new nets for the fishermen

of Norway, wheat for French bakers, tractors for Belgian farmers, a thousand baby

chicks for the children of Vienna from 4-H Club members in America. Politics,

needless to say, sometimes interfered with altruism. Some congressmen tried to

turn the Marshall Plan into a giant pork barrel, voting to send Europeans the fruits

of their districts, needed or not. From Kentucky and North Carolina poured

millions of cigarettes; from the Midwest arrived thousands of pounds of canned

spaghetti, delivered to gagging Italians. In London drawing rooms, there was some

resentment of the heavy American hand. "Our Uncle, who art in America, Sam be

thy name/Thy Navy come, thy will be done," went one ditty. In Paris, fearful for

the purity of the culture (and the sale of wine), the French National Assembly

banned the sale, manufacture and import of Coca-Cola.

American aid had a darker side. The Marshall Plan provided the CIA with a

handy slush fund. To keep communists from taking over Italy (a genuine threat in

1948), the CIA began handing out money to Italian politicians. At first, the agency

had so little money that America's gentlemen spooks had to pass the hat in New

York men's clubs to raise cash for bribes. But with the Marshall Plan, there was

suddenly plenty of "candy," as CIA official E. Howard Hunt called it, to tempt

European politicians and labor leaders.

The CIA's meddling looks sinister in retrospect (though it seemed essential

in 1948, when policymakers feared Stalin could start a revolution in Italy and

France "just by picking up the phone"). The actual impact of the aid is also a

source of dispute. Some economists have argued that the plan played only a

superficial role in Europe's recovery. They point to Europe's pent-up innovation

and restorative will. But the fact is that from 1938 to 1947 the standard of living in

Europe had been declining by about 8 percent a year. After the arrival of the first

Marshall aid, the arrows all turned up. Europe's per capita GNP rose by a third

between 1948 and 1951. American technicians brought know-how to Europe and

reaped enormous good will.

Perhaps America's best export was hope. The Marshall Plan arrived at a

time of despondency as well as hardship. Forced to work together, Europeans

overcame some historic enmities while America shed its tradition of peacetime

isolationism. Ties strengthened by the Marshall Plan evolved into the Western

Alliance that stood fast until communism crumbled of its own weight in the Soviet

Union. Some of the men who made the Marshall Plan possible saw the romantic

and epic quality of their task. It was "one of the greatest and most honorable

adventures in history," wrote Dean Acheson. His friend and successor at State,

Bob Lovett, had a more practical view the Marshall Plan was that rare government

program that came in on budget, accomplished its goal--and then ended.

The men who made the Marshall Plan were practical, and their motivations

can be regarded coldly as a matter of economics and power. But they also wanted

to act because they believed that saving Europe was the right and only thing to do.

They achieved that rarity among nations--a bold act by one that benefited all.