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Excerpt from "Special Message to the Congress on the Threat to the Freedom of Europe, March 17, 1948"

Published in Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States:
Harry S. Truman, January 1 to December 31, 1948,
published in 1964

"The Soviet Union and its satellites were invited to cooperate in the European recovery program. They rejected that invitation. More than that, they have declared their violent hostility to the program and are aggressively attempting to wreck it."

In July 1947, sixteen Western European nations that had chosen to participate in the U.S.-proposed European recovery plan known as the Marshall Plan met in Paris. After several months of discussion, on September 22, 1947, the nations had readied their proposal of immediate needs and long-term cooperation goals for Washington's review.

The U.S. Congress began to consider...