ON June 5th, 1947, the US Secretary of State, Gen George C. Marshall, unveiled at Harvard a plan for the economic regeneration of war-devastated Europe. It would include former foes such as occupied Germany, and the goal was to save Europe from hunger, disease and communism.
Gen Marshall was a quiet-spoken professional soldier. America's wartime chief-of-staff was the organiser of victory and he enjoyed the confidence of Presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman.
Early in March 1947 Gen Marshall attended a foreign ministers' conference in Moscow to arrange a peace settlement with Germany. It ran for five weeks and accomplished nothing.
There was civil war in Greece between communist partisans and a reactionary military-dominated government aided by Britain which considered Greece its sphere of influence.
Britain had ceased to be a great power, and the Lab our government faced economic collapse and subsisted on US loans which could not be repaid. The Truman administration took over Britain's responsibility and Congress appropriated hundreds of millions of dollars to defeat communism.
This was the background to Gen Marshall's speech at the Harvard commencement, addressing parents, students, faculty and the like.
He argued in his Harvard speech that a hungry Europe needed help. The war had dislocated "the entire fabric of the European economy ... The remedy lies in breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole
Europe required a cure rather than a palliative, in Marshall's view. Any government willing to help in the task of recovery would get full co-operation from the US. "Any government which manoeuvres to block recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us," he continued.
"Furthermore, governments, political parties or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit there from politically will encounter the opposition of the United States.
The latter shaft was directed at America's wartime ally, the Soviet Union, which had lost more soldiers and citizens, and suffered more destruction, than any country involved in the war.
Unprecedented allocations amounted to $13 billion, the equivalent of $88 billion today. Faced with such magnanimity, the British foreign secretary, Ernest Bevin, described the Marshall Plan as a "lifeline to sinking men
Because of the Plan, there grew from the ashes of the second World War the world's richest countries.
Czechoslovakia inquired about Marshall aid and the Prague coup followed in February 1948, on Stalin's orders, because he did not trust the Czechs.
The debate about the Plan goes on. Did it revive western Europe's economies as is claimed? Clearly it helped. Asked about that in 1948, the architect of Germany's monetary and tax reforms, Ludwig Erhard, replied: "Currency reform and the Marshall Plan are both contributory factors of economic recovery ... and must operate simultaneously, if they are to be fully effective."
He credited the Marshall Plan with providing money and confidence, "preparing the ground for new capital to be raised".