WHII.31

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media type="custom" key="29541827" align="right" =Describe the policy of containment, including the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan, and NATO as America's response to Soviet expansionist policies=

Topics on the Page

 * The Truman Doctrine **
 * The Marshall Plan **
 * NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization **

[[image:rotating gif.gif width="66" height="66"]]See also USII.18 and USII.21 for more on the Truman Doctrine, the Marshall Plan and the American policy of containment
[|President Harry S. Truman] announced details to Congress of what eventually became known as the [|Truman Doctrine] on 12th March, 1947, pledging the American support of "free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.”

Click here for the text of [|President Truman' speech to Congress] announcing the Truman Doctrine.

See a timeline providing a background to U.S. policies leading up to the Cold War. View a Wordle of President Truman's speech to Congress announcing the Truman Doctrine.

Interactive map of Cold War Europe

The [|Marshall Plan]
Marshall’s plan was drafted by Charles E. Bohlen, who was the current State Department official and would later become the ambassador to the Kremlin.
 * In the speech that he delivered, he outlined this problem:
 * "Europe's requirements are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character."
 * His suggestion to the solution of the problem was as follows: for the European nations themselves, with the aid of the U.S., set up a program for the reconstruction of Europe. It was stated to help prevent to spreading of communism westward.

Marshall’s plan was immediately seen in its significance. On June 13, British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin (1891-1951) predicted that his address "will rank as one of the greatest speeches in world history."

It cost the United States $20 billion for the project.
 * Marshall also offered aid to the Soviet Union and its allies in eastern Europe, but Stalin denounced the program as a trick and refused to participate. This rejection made the process of the measure passable.

The Marshall Plan benefited the American economy.
 * The money in Europe would be used to buy shipped goods from the U.S. By 1953 the U.S. put in $13 billion and Europe was “on its feet” again. Moreover, Marshall’s plan included West Germany as part of the European economical community.
 * The plan was purely economic until the end of the Korean War.

The Marshall Plan is commemorated today as America's generous hand-up to its friends in Europe in their hour of need, including Germany.
 * While its beneficial effects for many should not be made light of, as usual there is a little more to the picture than meets the eye.
 * Europe was suffering through its second winter of near starvation and bitter cold. Its economies were stagnated amid growing signs of political unrest.
 * While the four Allied victors squabbled over how to administer their defeated and now occupied foe, one of them, the USSR, had set up a series of "client states" in countries it had liberated from Nazi control in Eastern Europe.
 * It was against this backdrop of crisis, nearly two years after war's end, that Secretary of State Marshall proposed his "European Recovery Program" to a lukewarm reception among American taxpayers. Altruism aside, the program had three clear purposes:
 * 1) To prevent a repeat of events following WWI where prolonged economic turmoil resulted in extremist governments taking control and waging more war.
 * 2) To create a bulwark against further Soviet expansion into Western Europe - the USSR had consolidated its control over all of Eastern Europe and its portion of occupied Germany and Communist parties (whether or not they had direct links with Moscow) commanded near majorities in France and Italy.
 * 3) American manufacturers and farmers needed markets for their surplus output.

American security and prosperity was staked to the creation of an "orderly and prosperous Europe." The plan succeeded in as far as the recipients of aid experienced unprecedented economic growth in the decades to come along with relative political stability. Interestingly enough, the removal of trade barriers and tariffs under its provisions encouraged closer cooperation among the countries that came to form the core of what is now the European Union.

Click here for a clip of George Marshall's speech at Harvard, and a more resources on the Marshall Plan.

Click here for an online exhibit on George Marshall, commemorating the 50th Anniversary of the Marshall Plan.

Click here for a NY Times blog about how the Marshall Plan fits into today's world.

Read this essay contrasting the legacy of the Marshall Plan to how successful it really was.

Interactive Truman Doctrine and Marshall Aid brainstorm web

Click here for a clip on George Marshall delivering the speech about his plan

NATO (North Atlantic Treaty Organization)


NATO, the [|North Atlantic Treaty Organization], is still functioning today. NATO is an alliance of 26 European countries and the United States who work together for the interest of the North Atlantic region.
 * One of NATO’s goals is to secure the freedom and safety of its members by political and military means.
 * It secures democracy and the beliefs that law is fundamental and that disputes should be settled peacefully. It spreads its message throughout the Euro-Atlantic area.
 * NATO provides a forum in which Canada, European Countries, and the United States can consult together on security risks and can take a common view and concern to deal with them.
 * NATO defends its allies from attack and an attack on one of the members is considered an attack on all of the members.

Click here to see the North Atlantic Treaty, in English and in French.

If the Marshall Plan was the soft side of the Truman Doctrine (the carrot), then NATO can be seen as its hard side (the stick). The North Atlantic Treaty, which brought NATO into existence, was signed in 1949 cementing the unimpeachable rift that had grown between the United States and its former ally in World War II, the Soviet Union. The battle lines were clearly drawn between the U.S. and its allies in Western Europe and to the North; and the USSR and its "satellites" in Eastern Europe and elsewhere.

Signatories to the treaty were pledged to mutual defense should any party come under attack. The military alliance grew in significance as tensions mounted between the two camps during and following the Korean War. France partially withdrew from its provisions in 1966 citing the alliance as a hollow deterrence to an actual Soviet expansion into Western Europe. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1989, NATO membership has expanded to Russia's borders (much to its dismay) and includes most of the former Soviet satellite states.

Watch a propaganda film produced by the United States Department of Defense, explaining the formation of NATO.

Six years after NATO was signed, the Soviet Union and several nations in the Eastern Bloc signed the Warsaw Pact, a military defense treaty similar to NATO.

Although NATO was originally formed as part of a policy of containment during the early Cold War, it continues to exist today, and has transformed since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Read more about "How NATO has Changed in the Post Cold War Era."

The [|Treaty of Brussels], signed on March 17, 1948, by Belgium , the Netherlands , Luxembourg , France , and the United Kingdom , is considered the precursor to the NATO agreement. This treaty established a military alliance, later to become the Western European Union. However, American participation was thought necessary in order to counter the military power of the Soviet Union, and therefore talks for a new military alliance began almost immediately.

The policy of containment which was developed under Truman was followed throughout the Cold War, and was an ideology which informed the wars Korea and Vietnam at this time. Read "The Vietnam War and the Tragedy of Containment" to find out about some of the negative effects of this policy, on both Americans and foreign populations.

View a list of films that were made in this era, including propaganda films against Communism, and films made in response to the Red Scare.

Additional Information on the Truman Doctrine
The reason for this doctrine was that Britain denied to help Greece in its fight against communism. Also, Truman addressed the dangers of the spread of the Soviet Union’s power throughout the Middle East. Included in this speech was the request to Congress that it agree to give military and economic support to Greece in its fight against communism, asking for $400 million for this program. Truman concluded by saying that he intended to send U.S. armed forces into countries who are threatened by the spread of communism. This policy of aid was an American challenge to Soviet ambitions throughout the world.

Truman's promise to help peoples from outside pressures was inherently hypocritical, given that the United States proceeded to exert its influence on foreign nations under the justification of this doctrine. Read historian Howard Zinn's account of the Truman Doctrine and U.S. foreign policy at this time here.

Europe, and indeed the world, was in a state of flux and crisis in the immediate post-war era. The overall balance of power was extremely lopsided in favor of the U.S., the only major economy to survive the ravages of war unscathed. Europe was suffering through yet another winter of food and coal shortages and the Soviet Union had effectively annexed its Eastern half into its sphere of influence. The stakes were high and policy created by the U.S. around this region at this time had far-reaching implications for the remainder of the century and beyond world-wide. Following the Soviet Union's expansion into Eastern Europe, Truman decided to draw a line in the sand at the Mediterranean's "northern tier" - Greece and Turkey. This was a policy aimed at "containing" the Soviet's military and political power couched in terms of supporting "freedom" and "democracy" in those countries. Protecting future access to Middle Eastern oil reserves was also declared in America's "strategic interest" in pitching this policy to war-wary U.S. taxpayers. While the drive toward hegemony by the USSR was real, the political reality in Greece was that a highly unpopular monarchy was being propped up by a corrupt military establishment which was battling left-leaning para-military groups that probably did receive some support from the Soviets indirectly through Yugoslavia. So while the cause sounds noble and justifiable in light of contemporary events in the area - the fact is that the people of Greece were saddled with a highly repressive military junta for decades to come and lingering resentment toward U.S. interference in its internal affairs still runs high to this day. Turkey was also considered too "strategic" to manage its own affairs and its people have yet to get a taste of real democracy. It could well be argued that the tone set by Truman's policy in Turkey and Greece, successfully sold to Congress in 1947, set the stage for the militarization of Europe, McCarthyism at home, and a host of ill-advised military and covert interventions around the globe culminating in the debacle in Southeast Asia.

The Truman doctrine, part of an effort to suppress Communism abroad, was issued amidst efforts to suppress Communism domestically. Read more about McCarthyism here. Many of these policies were linked to other discriminatory practices in American politics. Read here about how Truman's Federal Employee Loyalty Program negatively impacted LGBTQ Americans as well as Communists, including those who worked for the government as well as many who did not.