Winning the Peace: The Marshall Plan and America’s Coming of Age as a Superpower

During the spring of 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall promulgated what would come to be known as the Marshall Plan: a proposal to spend up to $20 billion to restore the infrastructure and economies of Europe, then still foundering in recession and poverty after the ravages of WWII. As Mills, American studies professor at Sarah Lawrence, shows in this elegant study, the plan not only offered relief but brought about a degree of European unity by forcing countries to work in concert to mend their fractured continent. The U.S. mostly refrained from influencing specific solutions, an approach that Mills argues the present administration should think about adopting today. The plan worked to the advantage of the United States as much as it worked to the advantage of noncommunist Europe: much of the economic aid supplied was to be used to purchase American merchandise, and legislation required that this merchandise travel on U.S. merchant vessels. Six years after Marshall’s first proposal, the U.S. had invested some $13 billion, and virtually all of Western Europe stood restored. This overview covers a complex subject straightforwardly and well. (Feb.)