Cold War Primary Sources | George C. Marshall

Excerpt from "Remarks by the Honorable George C. Marshall,
Secretary of State, at Harvard University on June 5, 1947"

Published in Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS), Volume III,
1947: The British Commonwealth; Europe, published in 1972

"Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist."

Following the passage of the Truman Doctrine in March 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall (1880–1959) put the staff of the State Department to work planning an overall economic recovery program for Europe. By April 1947, communist parties were gaining strength in France and Italy. Postwar Western European economies were...