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In February, the Greek crisis exploded. The new Secretary of State was taken by surprise. He and the President had to meet the emergency with an emergency measure: $400 million for Greece and neighboring Turkey. With the sudden full sight of the enemy, with, at last, an intimation of his aims and strength, Marshall alerted his whole front. Harry Truman made the speech (written by Marshall and his aides) which became known as the Truman Doctrine.
To a growing sense of realism in U.S. foreign policy, the speech added a much-needed note of resolution: "One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. . . . We shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples . . . against aggressive movements that seek to impose on them totalitarian regimes."
The Roadblocks. But basically the Truman Doctrine was a defensive move. George Marshall still hoped that peace by agreement was possible, that patience, firmness and common honesty would be enough to bring to the world council table. He flew off to Moscow for the conference of Foreign Ministers on peace terms for Austria and Germany.
The conference lasted more than a month, through 44 sterile sessions. For Marshall, it became no more than a series of sorties down the valleys of world peace, sorties which ended always at the same roadblock: Soviet intransigence. He came back with this intelligence report: "At Moscow, propaganda appeals to passion and prejudice appeared to take the place of appeals to reason and understanding."
It was then, in the deceptively peaceful setting of the Harvard Yard, that the Secretary made his first clearly offensive move. His aides had brought him other intelligence reports. Europe was broke. Unless the U.S. acted, the whole front of Western democracy was about to collapse. Quietly, George Marshall said that if the countries of Europe would meet and agree on their economic needs, the U.S. would underwrite their recovery.
The Gigantic Suggestion. A politician —e.g., Franklin Roosevelt—would have launched the policy with full organ tones. Marshall was so matter-of-fact that at first his country did not even catch the import of his gigantic suggestion. It flew in the face of all the vows that Republican Congressmen made—and the public at election time had approved—to cut taxes, end Government controls, end Government spending. It was a promissory note for billions of U.S. dollars.
But the rest of the world caught it before the next day dawned. Ernest Bevin exulted: "I grabbed it with both hands." Western Europe was galvanized with new hope. The Soviet Union was thrown into momentary confusion.
Moscow tried desperately to sabotage the conference which the European nations immediately called in Paris. Moscow tightened its grip on the satellite states, forced Poland and Czechoslovakia to decline to attend the conference after both had announced that they hoped to participate in the Marshall Plan. As a reconnaissance in force, Marshall's speech was spectacularly successful.