The Truman Doctrine, 1947

With the Truman Doctrine, President Harry S. Truman established that the United States would
provide political, military and economic assistance to all democratic nations under threat from
external or internal authoritarian forces. The Truman Doctrine effectively reoriented U.S. foreign
policy, away from its usual stance of withdrawal from regional conflicts not directly involving the
United States, to one of possible intervention in far away conflicts.
The Truman Doctrine arose from a speech delivered by President Truman before a joint session of
Congress on March 12, 1947. The immediate cause for the speech was a recent announcement by
the British Government that, as of March 31, it would no longer provide military and economic
assistance to the Greek Government in its civil war against the Greek Communist Party. Truman
asked Congress to support the Greek Government against the Communists. He also asked Congress
to provide assistance for Turkey, since that nation, too, had previously been dependent on British
aid.
At the time, the U.S. Government believed that the Soviet Union supported the Greek Communist
war effort and worried that if the Communists prevailed in the Greek civil war, the Soviets would
ultimately influence Greek policy. In fact, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin had deliberately refrained
from providing any support to the Greek Communists and had forced Yugoslav Prime
Minister Josip Tito to follow suit, much to the detriment of Soviet-Yugoslav relations. However, a
number of other foreign policy problems also influenced President Truman’s decision to actively
aid Greece and Turkey. In 1946, four setbacks, in particular, had served to effectively torpedo any
chance of achieving a durable post-war rapprochement with the Soviet Union: the Soviets’ failure to
withdraw their troops from northern Iran in early 1946 (as per the terms of the Tehran Declaration
of 1943); Soviet attempts to pressure the Iranian Government into granting them oil concessions
while supposedly fomenting irredentism by Azerbaijani separatists in northern Iran; Soviet efforts
to force the Turkish Government into granting them base and transit rights through the Turkish
Straits; and, the Soviet Government’s rejection of the Baruch plan for international control over
nuclear energy and weapons in June 1946.
In light of the deteriorating relationship with the Soviet Union and the appearance of Soviet
meddling in Greek and Turkish affairs, the withdrawal of British assistance to Greece provided the
necessary catalyst for the Truman Administration to reorient American foreign policy. Accordingly,
in his speech, President Truman requested that Congress provide $400,000,000 worth of aid to both
the Greek and Turkish Governments and support the dispatch of American civilian and military
personnel and equipment to the region.
Truman justified his request on two grounds. He argued that a Communist victory in the Greek
Civil War would endanger the political stability of Turkey, which would undermine the political
stability of the Middle East. This could not be allowed in light of the region’s immense strategic
importance to U.S. national security. Truman also argued that the United States was compelled to
assist “free peoples” in their struggles against “totalitarian regimes,” because the spread of
authoritarianism would “undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of
the United States.” In the words of the Truman Doctrine, it became “the policy of the United States
to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside
pressures.”
Truman argued that the United States could no longer stand by and allow the forcible expansion of
Soviet totalitarianism into free, independent nations, because American national security now
depended upon more than just the physical security of American territory. Rather, in a sharp break
with its traditional avoidance of extensive foreign commitments beyond the Western Hemisphere
during peacetime, the Truman Doctrine committed the United States to actively offering assistance
to preserve the political integrity of democratic nations when such an offer was deemed to be in the
best interest of the United States.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/truman-doctrine
Marshall Plan, 1948 Lessons From History Series: The Legacy of the Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan
In the immediate post-World War II period, Europe remained ravaged by war and thus susceptible
to exploitation by an internal and external Communist threat. In a June 5, 1947, speech to the
graduating class at Harvard University, Secretary of State George C. Marshall issued a call for a
comprehensive program to rebuild Europe. Fanned by the fear of Communist expansion and the
rapid deterioration of European economies in the winter of 1946–1947, Congress passed the
Economic Cooperation Act in March 1948 and approved funding that would eventually rise to over
$12 billion for the rebuilding of Western Europe.
The Marshall Plan generated a resurgence of European industrialization and brought extensive
investment into the region. It was also a stimulant to the U.S. economy by establishing markets for
American goods. Although the participation of the Soviet Union and East European nations was an
initial possibility, Soviet concern over potential U.S. economic domination of its Eastern European
satellites and Stalin’s unwillingness to open up his secret society to westerners doomed the idea.
Furthermore, it is unlikely that the U.S. Congress would have been willing to fund the plan as
generously as it did if aid also went to Soviet Bloc Communist nations.
Thus the Marshall Plan was applied solely to Western Europe, precluding any measure of Soviet
Bloc cooperation. Increasingly, the economic revival of Western Europe, especially West Germany,
was viewed suspiciously in Moscow. Economic historians have debated the precise impact of the
Marshall Plan on Western Europe, but these differing opinions do not detract from the fact that the
Marshall Plan has been recognized as a great humanitarian effort. Secretary of State Marshall
became the only general ever to receive a Nobel Prize for peace. The Marshall Plan also
institutionalized and legitimized the concept of U.S. foreign aid programs, which have become a
integral part of U.S. foreign policy.
https://history.state.gov/milestones/1945-1952/marshall-plan
https://www.george-marshall-society.org/george-c-marshall/the-marshall-plan-and-its-consequences/
https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/marshall-plan

The Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan

https://history.state.gov/departmenthistory/short-history/truman
The first step was the “Truman Doctrine” of March 1947, which reflected the combativeness of
President Harry Truman. Truman wanted to “scare the hell” out of Congress. Arguing that Greece
and Turkey could fall victim to subversion without support from friendly nations, Truman asked
Congress to authorize $400-million in emergency assistance. To justify this course, he said: “I
believe we must assist free peoples to work out their destinies in their own way.” The key to
preventing the overthrow of free nations was to attack the conditions of “misery and want” that
nurtured totalitarianism.
Soon this general principle was applied to Western Europe as a whole. In June 1947,
Secretary George C. Marshall proposed the extension of massive economic assistance to the
devastated nations of Europe, saying that the policy of the United States was not directed “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 existence of political and social
conditions in which free institutions can exist.”
What the Secretary of State left unsaid was that while the U.S. plan would be open to the Soviet
Union and its satellites in Eastern Europe, it emphasized the free market economy as the best path
to economic reconstruction—and the best defense against communism in Western Europe.
Congress responded to Marshall’s proposal by authorizing the European Recovery Program, better
known as the Marshall Plan. An investment of about $13 billion in Europe during the next few
years resulted in the extraordinarily rapid and durable reconstruction of a democratic Western
Europe. VIDEO https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Jb8aW46T3bg 4'51''

https://www.cfr.org/event/lessons-history-series-legacy-truman-doctrine-and-marshall-plan