Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan

Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan

start

Overview

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. President Harry S Truman (Truman Doctrine)

• After World War II, Germany was divided into four occupation zones administered by the various Allied countries.
• The French, British, and American zones soon combined into one zone. This was West Germany, a democratic nation.
• East Germany was under the control of the Soviet Union.
• The city of Berlin itself, geographically located in East Germany, was also split between a democratic West and a communist East.

Truman Doctrine

• Stalin had successfully installed communist governments loyal to the Soviet Union in Eastern European countries, including East Germany, Albania, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Romania, Bulgaria, and Poland.
• The spread of communism was a real fear among US leaders and allies.
• Communism was opposed to many of the beliefs of western countries.
• Communism imposed state controls on the economy, and restricted speech, religion, and the press.
• Communism tended toward totalitarianism.
• Stalin had sent millions of his own countrymen to their deaths in labor camps known as gulags.
• As the danger of communism began to manifest itself in Greece and Turkey, both

US allies, President Truman gave a speech before Congress on March 12, 1947. A few of the key lines read: The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will. The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta Agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar developments.

I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way. I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and financial aid which is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.

• His policy became known as the Truman Doctrine, and it was influenced by the policy of containment laid out in George Kennan’s “long telegram.”
• The United States began to aid countries in Europe and other parts of the world in order to prevent the spread of communism.

Truman Doctrine (continued)

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one. One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression, a controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.

Marshall Plan

• Much of Europe lay in ruins after World War II. Economies were severely crippled and infrastructure was destroyed.
• After Stalin installed communist governments in most eastern European countries in the late 1940s, US leaders became alarmed.
• US Secretary of State George C. Marshall proposed a plan in June of 1947 to revitalize "The confidence of Europeans in the economic future of their countries and all of Europe." Known officially as the European Recovery Program, the Marshall Plan entailed bringing production in Europe up to its previous levels in just four years.
• The Marshall Plan was an anti-communist foreign policy action as well as a

humanitarian effort.humanitarian effort.

• Most European nations did not have to repay their loans to the United States; they were expected to produce and restore their economies with the money they received.

Marshall Plan (continued)

• The Marshall Plan was open to the communist eastern European countries as well, but Stalin forbade the Soviet Union and other communist countries from participating.
• In the end, the Marshall Plan provided economic aid to sixteen European countries.
• It helped boost the recovery of European economies, as well as helping to establish strong markets for US goods abroad. Thus, the US economy of the 1950s would see significant growth.
• The Marshall Plan also contributed to a tense period in US-Soviet relations.
• To break the blockade, the United States and Britain flew food and fuel into Berlin

from Western Germany.

• The Marshall Plan may have only had a modest long-term economic impact on Europe.
• The Marshall Plan succeeded in fending off the rise of communist sentiments in western Europe by helping to create conditions in which democracy could thrive.

• The Soviets actually used the Warsaw Pact to invade some of its own member states-Hungary in 1956 and Czechoslovakia in 1968.
• NATO would prove to be a strong and enduring military alliance throughout the Cold War.
• It helped its members present a united military stance against potential Soviet threats throughout Europe and the North Atlantic.
• The United States is still a leading member of NATO today.

NATO and the Warsaw Pact

• The Soviet blockade of Berlin led many Western leaders to call for a military alliance to stand up to potential communist threats.
• An attack against one member state was considered an attack against all.
• The Warsaw Pact united the Soviet Union and most communist Eastern European countries into a military alliance.