Viswanathan K's Thoughts

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 ch...

Continuation of the series based on the book, Saving a Continent . The Americans began to believe that the Soviet strategy on Europe was to smile and talk, but drag things on until Europe collapsed economically, at which point communists backed by Stalin would take power. So the US concluded that they had to act unilaterally. They told the French and British that they should setup a “European community” that would identify its economic needs collectively (America couldn’t possibly find out each country’s needs individually) and then “ask” for that amount from the US. As an incentive, the US showed the stick: if they couldn’t group Europe together, then the US would just go and make “Germany a self-supporting competitor to the neighboring countries of Europe”! The British were pragmatic and agreed, but wondered if American money would then flow into Eastern Europe, an area under Soviet control. So the US suggested adding conditions for entry into the European community that w...

History always ignores peacetime leaders and glorifies or vilifies wartime leaders. And yet, as this great book, Saving a Continent shows, peacetime leaders can often have a much bigger impact on history. The book is about the Marshall Plan, the American plan to rebuild World War II-torn Europe. The backdrop to all this involved some things I knew, and others that I didn’t: -          All of Europe, Western and Eastern, was in shambles in 1945. -          Only America remained untouched, because of its geographical isolation. -          The Soviet Union was not considered an enemy. -          Many European countries, even France and Italy, had communists in varying degrees of power via coalitions with democratic parties. -          America was isolationist by nature at the ...