The Plan’s relatively poor image in France represented a partial public relations success for the French Communists, perhaps their greatest.[20] In Austria the local Communists—backed by Soviet forces still occupying the eastern region of the country—never made any dent in the popularity of Americans and their aid; the latter put food in people’s mouths and this was what mattered most. In Greece the situation was clearer still. In the circumstances of a brutal civil war Marshall Aid, extended to Greece in April 1948, made the difference between survival and destitution. The $649 million of American aid to Greece under the ERP supported refugees and staved off hunger and disease: the mere delivery of mules to indigent farmers made the difference between life and death for thousands of peasant families. In 1950 Marshall Aid was credited with furnishing half of the country’s GNP.
How successful was the European Recovery Program? Western Europe indubitably recovered, and precisely over the period (1948-1951) of the Marshall Plan. By 1949 French industrial and agricultural production both exceeded 1938 levels for the first time. By the same criterion sustained recovery was achieved in 1948 by the Netherlands, in 1949 by Austria and Italy, in 1950 by Greece and West Germany. Of those countries occupied during the war, only Belgium, Denmark and Norway recovered sooner (in 1947). Between 1947 and 1951 the combined GNP of western Europe rose by 30 percent.
In the short-term the chief contribution of the Program to this recovery was surely the provision of dollar credits. These underwrote trade deficits, facilitated the large-scale importation of urgently needed raw materials and thus carried Western Europe through the crisis of mid-’47. Four-fifths of all the wheat consumed by Europeans in the years 1949-51 came from dollar-zone countries. Without Marshall Aid it is not clear how the fuel shortages, food shortages, cotton shortages and other commodity scarcities could have been overcome at a politically acceptable price. For while the economies of western Europe surely could have continued to grow without American assistance, this could only have been achieved by repressing home demand, cutting back on newly-introduced social services and further reducing the local standard of living.
This was a risk most elected governments were understandably reluctant to run. In 1947 the coalition governments of western Europe were trapped and they knew it. It is all very well for us to recognize in hindsight that Marshall Aid ‘merely’ broke a logjam born of renewed demand, that Washington’s new approach overcame a ‘temporary’ dollar shortfall. But no-one in 1947 could know that the $4.6 billion gap was ‘temporary’. And who at the time could be sure that the logjam was not sweeping the fragile European democracies over a roaring cataract? Even if the ERP did no more than buy time, that was a crucial contribution, for time was precisely what Europe appeared to lack. The Marshall Plan was an economic program but the crisis it averted was political.
The longer run benefits of the Marshall Plan are harder to assess. Some observers were disappointed at the Americans’ apparent failure to persuade Europeans to cooperate in integrating their planning as much as they had initially hoped. And it is true that whatever collaborative habits and institutions the Europeans did eventually acquire were only indirectly indebted to American efforts, if at all. But in the light of Europe’s recent past, any moves in this direction represented progress; and Marshall’s invitation did at least oblige the mutually-suspicious European states to sit down together and co-ordinate their responses and, ultimately, much else. The Times was not so very wide of the mark when it stated, in a leader on January 3rd 1949, that ‘(w)hen the cooperative efforts of the last year are contrasted with the intense economic nationalism of the inter-war years, it is surely permissible to suggest that the Marshall Plan is initiating a new and hopeful era in European history.’
The real benefits were psychological. Indeed, one might almost say that the Marshall Plan helped Europeans feel better about themselves. It helped them break decisively with a legacy of chauvinism, depression and authoritarian solutions. It made co-ordinated economic policy-making seem normal rather than unusual. It made the beggar-your-neighbour trade and monetary practices of the thirties seem first imprudent, then unnecessary and finally absurd.
None of this would have been possible had the Marshall Plan been presented as a blueprint for the ‘Americanization’ of Europe. On the contrary, post-war Europeans were so aware of their humiliating dependence upon American aid and protection that any insensitive pressure from that quarter would certainly have been politically counter-productive. By allowing European governments to pursue policies that had emerged from domestic compromises and experiences, and by avoiding a one-size-fits-all approach to recovery programmes, Washington actually had to forego some of its hopes for western European integration, at least in the short term.
For the ERP was not parachuted into a vacuum. Western Europe was able to benefit from American help because it was a long-established region of private property, market economics and, except in recent years, stable polities. But for just this reason, western Europe had to make its own decisions and would ultimately insist on doing so. As the British diplomat Oliver Franks put it: ‘The Marshall Plan was about putting American dollars in the hands of Europeans to buy the tools of recovery.’ The rest—convertible currencies, good labour relations, balanced budgets and liberalized trade—would depend on Europeans themselves.
The obvious comparison, however, was not between American visions and European practices but between 1945 and 1918. In more respects than we now recall, the two post-war eras were uncannily alike. In the 1920s Americans were already encouraging Europeans to adopt US production techniques and labour relations. In the 1920s many American observers saw Europe’s salvation in economic integration and capital investment. And in the 1920s Europeans, too, looked across the Atlantic for guidance about their own future and for practical aid in the present.
But the big difference was that after World War One the US gave only loans, not grants; and these were nearly always supplied through the private capital market. As a result they carried a price tag and were usually short-term. When they were called in at the onset of the Depression, the effect was disastrous. The contrast in this respect is striking—after initial stumbles in 1945-47, American policymakers went to some lengths to correct the mistakes of the previous post-war era. The Marshall Plan is significant not just for what it did but for what it was careful to avoid.
There was one European problem, however, that the European Recovery Plan could neither solve nor avoid, yet everything else depended upon its resolution. This was the German Question. Without German recovery French planning would come to nought: France was to use Marshall counterpart funds to build huge new steel mills in Lorraine, for example, but without German coal these would be useless. Marshall credits with which to buy German coal were all very well; but what if there was no coal? In the spring of 1948 German industrial output was still only half that of 1936. The British economy would never recover while the country was spending unprecedented sums ($317 million in 1947 alone) just to sustain the helpless population of its zone of occupation in northwest Germany. Without Germany to buy their produce the trading economies of the Low Countries and Denmark were moribund.
20
Note, though, that 4 out of 10 Communist voters in France were in favour of accepting Marshall Aid, despite the Party’s opposition. French suspicion of the Marshall Plan was not so much political as cultural; many people seem to have been especially offended by what were described as ‘des questionnaires insipides et nombreux’ emanating from American bureaucracies—a particularly irritating reminder of their subordination to an inferior civilisation.