American Experience

Historian Walter LaFeber on Western Europe

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The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan dealt with two separate problems that Truman faced in the early part of 1947. The first problem was Soviet pressure in Turkey and Communist pressure, which, incidentally, was not entirely Soviet, on Greece. The Truman Doctrine dealt with that problem. In other words, the Truman Doctrine was a military and political response to what Truman perceived to be a military expansionism on the part of the Communists in the Eastern Mediterranean.

But there was an entirely different set of questions that Truman had to deal with, and I think to many people, including the President, this was the more important set of questions. This was, how do you save Western Europe, which historically had been the key part of the world for American exporters, for American culture, for the United States since the 19th century. Western Europe was in terrible, terrible shape. The way to solve this problem was not to build a military alliance in Western Europe.

In 1947, I think Atcheson put it very well when he said that "Unless the Soviets are absolutely crazy, there's not going to be any war in Western Europe." And nobody thought that Stalin was crazy. The threat in Western Europe was not the Red Army. The threat in Western Europe was starvation. The threat in Western Europe was that unless somehow the Western European governments were not helped, they could be a swing, through elections, towards the left, toward socialism and Communism in Western Europe. The way to deal with this was not militarily. The way to deal with this was economically. Consequently, the Marshall Plan was a response to that particular set of problems. Atcheson told the Senate, and I think very accurately, that even if the Red Army never existed, there would still be this problem in Western Europe. We would still need the Marshall Plan. The problems was one of Western capitalism, not Western military security. That was the question that the Marshall Plan was developed to address.

The problem, as it turned out, with the Marshall Plan was Germany. Most of the Marshall Plan aid was targeted towards Germany because Germany was the industrial hub of Europe. It had been throughout the 20th century. Once, however, the Soviets saw that the United States was intent upon rebuilding Western Europe, because only then did Americans believe you could rebuild the rest of Western Europe, once Stalin began to see Germany come back, Stalin began to get very, very distressed. After all, this was the nation that had invaded the Soviet Union twice in 30 years and this was the nation that Stalin had essentially fought World War II for to keep down forever.

By the early part of 1948, the German economy essentially rests on Lucky Strike cigarettes. The currency in Germany is so weak that Lucky Strike cigarettes are the common currency. And somebody said that the way Truman could really help the Germans, if he wanted to, is to send them 150 million cartons of Lucky Strike cigarettes. That's how bad the situation was. Consequently, what Truman did was begin to pour money into Germany to bring the German economy back. Stalin immediately responded. The way Stalin responded was to try to put pressure on Truman to back off. And he did this by blockading Berlin in the spring of 1948. Truman, in other words, had started out with an economic policy to save Western Europe for the sake of U.S. interests. He ended up within a year facing a Russian military threat in the very center of Europe at the most important point of American interest in Europe.

The blockade on Berlin that Stalin imposes in the spring and summer of 1948 occurs in a context that is extremely dangerous as far as U.S. observers are concerned, because in the spring of 1948, Czechoslovakia has fallen behind the Iron Curtain. Czechoslovakia was probably the most pro-Western of all the East European countries. It was a country with which the United States had very closely identified for years and years. Suddenly in March of 1948, Czechoslovakia falls to Communism. The consequence of this is that Truman now begins to believe that the Soviets have thrown off the restraint and that they are beginning to get quite irresponsible in terms of putting pressure not only in Czechoslovakia, but now, with the Berlin blockade, at the very center of Europe itself. What Truman doesn't understand, I think, is that he had helped bring this on, in part, unintentionally, and I think with good reason, by trying to bring Germany back to help the rest of Western Europe, to help the United States, which was something that Stalin simply couldn't tolerate for Soviet national interests.

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