It’s been 75 years since George Marshall outlined a bold plan to counter Soviet influence by revitalizing a foreign foe

By David L. Roll

June 3, 2022 1:50 pm ET

Appeared in the June 4, 2022, Wall Street Journal print edition as 'The 11-Minute Harvard Speech That Rebuilt Postwar Europe'.

Seventy-five years ago, on June 5, 1947, George C. Marshall delivered a historic speech at Harvard. According to the Harvard Crimson, a crowd of 15,000 turned up “not so much in expectation of seeing history made, as simply in awe of the man.”

Marshall was newly confirmed as President Harry Truman’s secretary of state and known by virtually every adult as the five-star army general who had guided the nation to victory in World War II. The speech he gave that day was just 11 minutes long. It called for the U.S. to rehabilitate Europe’s shattered postwar economy with an enormous, urgent infusion of financial and in-kind assistance.

Marshall envisioned a reindustrialized Germany as the key to Europe’s recovery.

What would soon be called “the Marshall Plan” was to be the most significant American diplomatic initiative since the Louisiana Purchase. “Our policy,” proclaimed Marshall, “is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.”

U.S. assistance to postwar Europe wasn’t just an act of incredible generosity but also one inspired by economic self-interest and national security. It helped lay the groundwork for a new order in Europe and arguably the world, wherein the U.S., by far the world’s most powerful nation, would export both its values and its brand of organized capitalism to protect and sustain itself at home.

Without mentioning the U.S.S.R. or communism by name, Marshall declared in the speech that while the U.S. would cooperate with any European government willing to assist with recovery, it would oppose any government or political party trying to block the recovery of other countries or otherwise perpetuating human misery. Those lines attracted sustained applause. Anyone paying attention knew which government and party he was referring to. In fact, the Soviets, who then occupied part of Germany, soon refused to participate in the Marshall Plan and blocked the Eastern European nations in their sphere of influence from doing so as well.

Marshall envisioned a reindustrialized Germany—with its capacity to produce coal, steel, fertilizer, food and machinery—as the key to Europe’s recovery. But he realized that it would be regarded as odious to elevate the living standards of the German people, who had gone along with Hitler. Talk of reconstructing Germany was enough to cause one to be hanged on the Ellipse in Washington, some quipped. Nonetheless, Germany was a bone of contention between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R., and Marshall understood that its revival as an American ally offered the best hope for containing communism and sustaining Western democracy.

Joseph Stalin may have understood this, too. At the time, the Soviet leader was demanding billions of dollars in reparations from Germany, the payment of which would cripple the country’s recovery. At a late-night meeting in the Kremlin just seven weeks before his Harvard speech, Marshall argued against this demand and for reindustrialization. Stalin responded with “seeming indifference,” recalled special assistant Chip Bohlen, content “to let matters drift” and suggested that this was only the first of many skirmishes concerning the fate of Germany.

Marshall was alarmed. He believed that Stalin’s cynical goal was to allow Germany and the rest of Europe to slide further toward economic ruin and chaos, thus rendering the continent ripe for Soviet influence if not domination. He became all the more convinced that Germany’s revival was vital to Europe’s security. Robert Murphy, the U.S. ambassador to Germany, later recalled that it was the deadlock at the end of the meeting between Marshall and Stalin that divided Europe and “really rang down the Iron Curtain.”

On his flight back to the states, Marshall stopped at Tempelhof airport in Berlin to meet with Gen. Lucius Dubignon Clay, the U.S. military governor of Germany, who was an expert in reconstruction. Since assuming his responsibilities in 1945, Clay had railed against instructions from Washington that had barred him from strengthening, rehabilitating, or even maintaining the German economy. Now Marshall released him from those instructions and gave him new ones to strengthen the economy in the Anglo-American zone, making it “the bulwark of America’s policy of containment.”

All the way back to Washington, wrote Bohlen, “Marshall talked of the importance of finding some initiative to prevent the complete breakdown of Western Europe.” That initiative, of course, would be the one officially called the European Recovery Program but popularly known as the Marshall Plan. When political adviser Clark Clifford recommended that it be called the Truman Plan, Truman scoffed. “If I send that plan up to the Hill,” he said, “it will quiver a couple of times, go belly up, and die. Even the worst Republican will vote for the plan if Marshall’s name is on it.”

Months later, the broad strokes articulated in Marshall’s 11-minute speech became a fully developed plan, and within a year the plan passed through Congress and became law. Of the $13.2 billion appropriated, $1.4 billion ($16.8 billion in today’s dollars) was allocated to the western zones of Germany. As a condition for receiving the money, France would have to merge its occupation zone in Germany with the U.S. and U.K. zones. This unified area would soon become the West German state.

The first tranche of Marshall Plan funds helped West Germany reform its currency and jump-start a surprisingly rapid economic and political revival. Integral to the Marshall Plan was the Truman administration’s elimination of German debt and reparations. As a result, real output increased by 18.5 percent in 1948 and leveled off at an average increase of 8 percent a year during the first half of the 1950s. As Dr. Manfred Knapp, professor of International Relations at the University of Frankfurt, concluded, “the economic recovery of Europe couldn't have been achieved without the reconstruction of the German economy.”

Today, with revisionist Russia waging war in Ukraine, a resurgent and unified Germany is again the key to the security of Europe. And again, Germany requires U.S. support, this time in reducing German dependence on Russian oil and gas. The Biden administration, in collaboration with the EU, has organized a task force to reduce European dependence on fossil fuels: Call it a “Marshall Plan for Energy Security.” Its principal focus will be on Germany, which is the largest importer of natural gas from Russia. By reducing Germany’s need for Russian fossil fuels, the U.S. can again help make Germany a bulwark against antidemocratic forces encroaching on the region.

Looking back, the evolution of America’s relationship with Germany since 1945 is nothing less than astonishing. With Marshall’s speech on his mind, President Truman wrote in his memoirs that “for the first time in the history of the world a victor was willing to restore the vanquished.” Truman and Marshall pivoted the U.S. from all-out war to offers of treasure and know-how, made to a foreign foe that had sought to destroy Europe and rule the world.

George Marshall, the man, may be fading from memory. His magnanimity and his vision, however, endure.

Mr. Roll is the author of “George Marshall: Defender of the Republic” and a trustee of the George C. Marshall Foundation.