Aid is Coming: A group of German children stand atop building rubble, cheering a United States cargo airplane as it flies over a western section of Berlin. American and British forces airlifted food and supplies after Soviet forces surrounded and closed off the besieged city
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In their eagerness to return to what people remembered as normality, few noticed the dimensions of onrushing economic disaster. Europe was not only incapable of resistance to the Soviets but was also engaged in a desperate ordeal for survival that had nothing to do with the communist threat. The U.S. had already poured more than $10 billion into Europe just to ward off freezing and starvation, but that amount barely sufficed. By 1947 it was clear that aid had to be linked to a long-range plan to make Europe economically self-supporting. Between 1948 and 1952, the U.S., through the Marshall Plan, distributed more than $13 billion to 16 countries. Britain, France and Germany accounted for half the total. Moscow rejected participation.
The Marshall Plan was a bargain at the price; its achievement was nothing less than the salvation of Western Europe's democracies. Two years after the aid began flowing, overall European industrial production had risen 45% higher than in 1947 and 25% higher than in the last prewar year, 1938. Bevin called the plan "a lifeline to sinking men."
Europe's economic pulse revived from a flicker to a beat. American officials demanded economic cooperation: here is the pie, the recipients were told; you must cut it among yourselves. In the process of arguing over how to split the aid, old rivals bared their economic plans and secrets to one another.
It was the first small step toward European economic integration.
That act might not have been possible without the timely and inadvertent assistance of Joseph Stalin. It was the Soviet leader's ambition for conquest that persuaded the U.S. Congress to spend whatever was deemed necessary to stop him. And it was fear of Stalin that drove Europeans together for self-protection.
The U.S. was a reluctant superpower. Even as American dollars poured out, Washington made no pledge to defend Europe. Where the Red Army had stopped, sprawled across Eastern and Central Europe, Soviet power reigned and probed westward. Only when a communist insurgency threatened to overthrow the British-backed monarchy in Greece and when Soviet pressure grew on Turkey did the U.S. finally react. On March 12, 1947, Harry Truman announced a program of economic and military aid to both countries. In what became known as the Truman Doctrine, the President said it was henceforth U.S. policy "to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation."
Yet Stalin struck again, this time on June 24, 1948; with scant warning, the Soviets blockaded Berlin. The U.S. mounted an unprecedented airlift of some 500 C-47s, C-54s and other craft that over 11 months flew into Berlin a total of 1.6 million tons of food, clothing, fuel and other necessities, until Stalin relented and reopened the roads.
The Berlin crisis institutionalized the cold war. On July 6, 1948, the U.S. entered into discussions with its major allies to establish a military alliance, and on April 4, 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty was signed by 12 countries. West Germany joined in 1955. No one expected an immediate Soviet attack, nor were the U.S. and its war-weary European partners ready to invest in a military buildup. NATO essentially amounted to the U.S.'s throwing its nuclear cloak over Western Europe.
Fifty years later, it seems astonishing that the architecture of Europe's postwar order was established in so short a time. It would be a mistake, however, to give U.S. and European diplomacy a logic and coherence that it never actually possessed. Under exceptional circumstances, an extraordinary generation of leaders merely improvised as they went along. The luck of history was with them. Except for Britain, the political landscape had been wiped clean. In France, Italy, the Netherlands and Belgium, Old Guard leaders and their parties were tainted by defeat or collaboration. And in the war's aftermath, none of the old vested interests had yet come back strong enough to block bold reforms.
The U.S. bestrode the world — not, of course, to everyone's satisfaction. Europe's wounded pride did not suffer American hegemony gladly. Still, the Pax Americana inaugurated an era of unprecedented prosperity that fostered the old dream of unity. It lasted 44 years, not so long a run as the Roman Empire, but not a bad one in this ravaged century.