Marshall · 1947
The Marshall Plan speech at Harvard
On the late-morning of Thursday the fifth of June 1947, at the Harvard Yard Tercentenary-Theatre at the Harvard-University-Commencement-ceremony in Cambridge, Massachusetts, the sixty-six-year-old Uniontown, Pennsylvania-born American General of the Army George Catlett Marshall, the General-of-the-Army US Army Chief of Staff who had led the World-War-Two American-Army-General-Staff through the 1939-to-1945 wartime-period and had been appointed United States Secretary of State by President Harry S. Truman on the twenty-first of January 1947 in his sixty-sixth year, gave the eleven-minute Harvard-Commencement honorary-degree acceptance-speech that has been universally remembered ever since as the foundational post-war announcement of the European Recovery Program, the thirteen-billion-dollar American-aid programme to the war-damaged-economies of Western-and-Central-Europe across the 1948-to-1952 Marshall-Plan-implementation-period that became the foundational post-war American-economic-aid programme to the recovering-European-economies. The Harvard-Commencement speech outlined the American-State-Department-proposal that the European-economies should propose a coordinated economic-recovery-programme on the strength of which the United-States-Congress would commit substantial American-economic-aid to the European-recovery-period. The European-response across the summer-of-1947 (the Anglo-French-organised European-Conference at the Quai-d'Orsay-Paris of the twelfth of July 1947, the Committee on European Economic Co-operation that drafted the September-1947 coordinated-European-economic-recovery-proposal) brought the Marshall-Plan to the Congressional Economic Cooperation Act of the third of April 1948 and the foundational 1948-1952 implementation period under the Economic-Cooperation-Administration. The Marshall-Plan remains the foundational American-economic-aid-programme in the modern-international-foreign-aid administration and was the foundational American-international-political-investment in the post-war Western-European democratic-and-capitalist-political-economic-recovery on which the NATO-defence-arrangement and the European-Economic-Community trade-and-political-integration would be built across the 1949-and-1957 institutional-foundations.
A diplomatic-economic programme is rarely launched by a eleven-minute Harvard-Commencement speech delivered by a sixty-six-year-old Secretary of State on the morning of an honorary-degree ceremony. The 1947 Marshall-Plan-announcement was the foundational-moment of the post-war American-foreign-aid policy and the Cold-War-foundational American-international-investment in the Western-European recovery.
THE UNIONTOWN BOY
George Catlett Marshall was born at 142 West Main Street in the coal-mining town of Uniontown in southwestern Pennsylvania on the thirty-first of December 1880, third and youngest son of George Catlett Marshall Sr., the Uniontown coke-mining-operations general-manager, and Laura Bradford. He was raised in the Uniontown working-class-coal-mining environment, was schooled at the Uniontown Academy, took the Virginia-Military-Institute (VMI) place in 1897 in his seventeenth year, and graduated from VMI in 1901 in the first-quarter of the 1901 VMI-graduation-class.
He took the second-lieutenant US Army-commission in February 1902 on the strength of the VMI-degree and the junior-officer competitive-examination, served across the 1902-to-1939 thirty-seven-year US Army junior-and-middle-and-senior officer-career on the Philippines-and-Oklahoma-and-Texas-and-Tianjin-and-Washington-and-Vancouver Barracks deployment-rotation, took the General-Staff-College-and-the-standing-Army-War-College senior-staff-training across the 1907-to-1908 and 1924-to-1928 periods, and took the senior-positions on the General Pershing American Expeditionary Forces General-Staff in France across the 1917-to-1919 period of the First-World-War.
THE WAR-TIME CHIEF OF STAFF
He was appointed US Army Chief of Staff by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on the morning of the first of September 1939 (the same-morning as the German-Wehrmacht invasion-of-Poland that opened the Second-World-War) in his fifty-ninth year, took up the Chief-of-Staff position the same day at the Washington War Department, and held the Chief-of-Staff position across the 1939-to-1945 wartime-period through to the final 1945-retirement on the twenty-sixth of November 1945 in his sixty-fifth year.
Across the six-year wartime-Chief-of-Staff tenure he led the American-Army expansion from the 189,000-officer-and-enlisted 1939 strength to the 8.3-million-officer-and-enlisted 1945 peak-strength (the largest single army-expansion in American-military-history), supervised the Allied-Pacific-and-European theatre-strategic-planning under the Combined-Chiefs-of-Staff Anglo-American coordination-arrangement of the 1942-and-1943 Casablanca-and-Cairo-and-Tehran-and-Quebec-and-Yalta strategic-conferences, recommended the D-Day Normandy-landing operation to President Roosevelt in 1944, and was promoted to the rank of General of the Army (the five-star-rank introduced by the 1944 Congressional-Joint-Resolution) on the sixteenth of December 1944.
THE SECRETARY OF STATE APPOINTMENT
Marshall retired from the US Army on the twenty-sixth of November 1945 at sixty-five and was appointed by President Truman as the Special-Envoy to China on the twenty-seventh of November 1945 on the one-year mediation-mission between the Nationalist Kuomintang and the Communist Chinese Communist Party in the post-war Chinese-Civil-War context. He completed the China-Mission on the seventh of January 1947, returned to Washington on the twentieth of January 1947, and was appointed United States Secretary of State by President Truman on the twenty-first of January 1947 in his sixty-sixth year. He took up the State-Department position on the same day in the State-Department Foggy-Bottom-headquarters.
THE FIFTH OF JUNE
The 1947 European-economic-situation through the late-winter and spring-of-1947 was the acute-crisis of the post-war Western-European economic-recovery. The 1946-to-1947 European-winter had been the coldest winter of the twentieth-century to date in Western Europe (the 1947-British-coal-crisis closed the British-industrial-economy across January-and-February 1947; the 1947-French-grain-shortage and Italian-coal-shortage created the acute-civilian-distress conditions across Western Europe). The State-Department analysis under the Policy-Planning-Staff director George F. Kennan and the Under-Secretary-of-State Dean Acheson had concluded across April-and-May 1947 that the Western-European-recovery required substantial American-economic-aid commitment if the Western-European-democracies were not to collapse into political-and-economic-crisis through the 1947-and-1948 period.
Marshall received the honorary-degree-invitation from Harvard President James Bryant Conant in early May 1947 for the Harvard-Commencement ceremony of the fifth-of-June. Marshall decided in mid-May 1947 to use the Harvard-Commencement speech as the public-announcement of the State-Department-proposed European-aid-programme on the strategic calculation that the Harvard-Commencement venue would give the announcement the appropriate non-partisan academic-institutional-context that would help build Congressional-and-public bipartisan-support.
The speech itself was the final-eleventh-section-of-the Harvard-Commencement-program. Marshall took the Harvard-Tercentenary-Theatre-platform at approximately 11:45 AM of the fifth-of-June 1947, gave the eleven-minute speech (the speech-text had been drafted in final-form by the State-Department speechwriter Charles Bohlen across the 31-May-to-3-June 1947 period; Marshall took the final-text into the Harvard-Commencement procession), and outlined the American-State-Department-proposal that the European-economies should propose a coordinated economic-recovery-programme on the strength of which the United-States-Congress would commit substantial American-economic-aid to the European-recovery-period. The closing line of the speech (it is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace) became the foundational rhetorical-position of the Marshall-Plan-programme.
THE STANDING-EUROPEAN-RESPONSE AND THE PLAN
The European-response across the summer of 1947 was the Anglo-French-organised European-Conference at the Quai d'Orsay in Paris of the twelfth of July 1947 (under the British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevin and the French Foreign Minister Georges Bidault), the Committee on European Economic Co-operation that drafted the September-1947 coordinated-European-economic-recovery-proposal under the sixteen-Western-European-nation participating-membership (the Soviet-Union and the Eastern-Bloc nations declined the Marshall-aid offer on the Soviet-bloc Stalin-policy-decision of the July-1947 Cominform meeting). The Committee on European Economic Co-operation proposal was submitted to the United-States-Congress in late September 1947.
The United-States-Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act of the third of April 1948 on the bipartisan-vote (passed the House by 318-to-75 and the Senate by 69-to-17), authorising the thirteen-billion-dollar European-Recovery-Program-implementation across the 1948-to-1952 implementation-period under the Economic Cooperation Administration. The Marshall-Plan implementation across the 1948-to-1952 four-year-period transferred approximately thirteen-billion-dollars (approximately one-hundred-and-seventy-billion-dollars in 2025-money) of American-economic-aid to the sixteen Western-European recipient-nations, restored the Western-European industrial-and-agricultural-economies to the pre-war 1938-economic-output by 1952, and built the foundational economic-political-foundation on which the NATO-defence-arrangement of 1949 and the European-Coal-and-Steel-Community of 1951 (the foundational European-Economic-Community precursor) would be established.
THE STANDING-NOBEL PEACE PRIZE
Marshall stepped down as Secretary of State on the twentieth of January 1949 on the Truman-second-term inauguration, served as Secretary of Defense in the Truman cabinet 1950 to 1951 across the Korean-War-mobilisation, and retired from public service in September 1951 in his seventieth year. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for 1953 on the strength of the Marshall-Plan-recognition (the first Nobel-Peace-Prize awarded to a professional-soldier in the history of the Prize), accepted the Prize at the Oslo-City-Hall-ceremony on the tenth of December 1953, and gave the Nobel-Lecture on the Marshall-Plan-rationale at the Oslo University-Hall on the eleventh of December 1953.
Marshall died at the Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington on the sixteenth of October 1959 at the seventy-eighth year of his age and is buried at Arlington National Cemetery in the Walker Family-Plot. The Marshall name in modern American foreign-policy history carries the weight of the morning at the Harvard-Tercentenary-Theatre on the fifth of June 1947.