A Harvard speech rebuilds Europe, and wins its author a peace prize
What happened
Speaking at a Harvard commencement in June 1947, Secretary of State George Marshall proposed a comprehensive American program to rebuild a Europe still in ruins two years after the war's end. Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act in March 1948, ultimately committing over 12 billion dollars to Western European recovery. Aid was formally offered to the Soviet Union and its satellite states as well, but Stalin, wary of American economic influence over Eastern Europe and unwilling to open Soviet books to Western auditors, refused it and forbade Eastern Bloc countries from accepting it. Marshall himself became the only career general in history to receive the Nobel Peace Prize.
Why it matters
By rebuilding Western Europe's economies and tying them to the United States, the Marshall Plan is credited with helping prevent the kind of economic desperation that had fed the rise of fascism after the First World War, while its rejection in the East hardened the exact economic split between the two halves of Europe that would define the Cold War.
How we know
The Economic Cooperation Act's text and appropriations are recorded in the US Congressional record, and the program's total disbursements were tracked and published by the administering agency itself, giving historians precise figures rather than later estimates.
Sources
- Office of the Historian, US Department of State. Marshall Plan, 1948 · Reputable sourcehistory.state.gov · The domain "history.state.gov" is on our Reputable source registry. · Link is live and its text matches the event's key terms (Jul 2026)
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