Rebuilding Europe - 3: Cheating and Selling

Conclusion of the series based on the book, Saving a Continent.

As all the (Western) European nations got together in Paris to identify their collective needs for aid, one of the delegates admitted:

“Everybody cheated like hell in Paris. Everybody.”

Many asked for far more than what they used to produce before the war! Others “estimated” what they would need in future! Britain wanted to ensure that nobody used this as a way to leap ahead of Britain. The French were keen that Germany be made largely “pastoral” and suggested “pulling the heavy industrial teeth” of the Germans. Many countries tried to publicly announce their lists as “final”, hoping to embarrass and force the US into agreeing to what the US contemptuously called their “shopping lists”.

The Americans retaliated by telling the Europeans bluntly that they abandon their customary “nationalistic approach”, accept some “infringement on their sovereignty” and to come to terms with the fact that “certain basic changes which have occurred and are contributing to their international positions”. The loss of their colonial empires wasn’t helping either. America also pushed for customs union within Europe, to ease trade and recovery while also making it easy for their own exports. The seeds for the EU had been sown. The Americans also decided to stop the de-Nazification of Germany: qualified individuals must fill the right jobs. Future economic growth was more important than past war crimes. The US also ensured that American money to build Europe would be used to buy (mostly) US and Western European items, not Canadian or South American.

As the needs of the Europeans began to solidify, President Truman had begun to work on ways to get support in government for this massive aid plan. It was not an easy sell at all. Hard questions were asked:

-         Why change from being isolationist to getting involved in global affairs?

-         Why pay for Germany, until recently the enemy they had fought?

-         How much was all this going to cost?

-         What was the benefit to the US, and more specifically, to the constituents of the politician who was going to vote on the aid package?

-         Was the communist threat really that serious?

The government answered these and many others, often tailoring the answers to suit the politician in question, and also appealed on humanitarian grounds. Truman called the vote the “greatest decision in our history”.

While politicians are prone to hyperbole, that Yes vote by the US for aid to rebuild Europe did indeed have monumental consequences that played out over the next half-century. And yet, how many people even know of the US President behind all this? That’s the fate of the peacetime leader throughout history.