Marshall Plan
The Marshall Plan and the Division of Europe
Charles S. Maier
Michael Cox and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe provide a valuable survey of much of the historiography of the Marshall Plan, rightly understood to be a centerpiece of the early Cold War. Their essay raises important questions about post-revisionist accounts and interpretations and makes a useful contribution in discussing the role of the British and French in the events of 1947—a role that the American literature long overlooked but that some corrective literature then overstated. Their article also helpfully summarizes the debates among Soviet leaders about the value and pitfalls of accepting U.S. proposals in the immediate aftermath of George Marshall's speech.1
Nonetheless, the essay makes less innovative and original arguments than it purports to, and it does not adequately analyze the meaning of "dividing Europe." Cox and Kennedy-Pipe imply that "dividing Europe" is equivalent to starting the Cold War. I will argue that indeed the United States and its Western allies bear much of the responsibility for dividing Europe—but that the policy was in fact a strategy for an ideological and geopolitical conflict that was already emerging. The Marshall Plan confirmed a division that events from the formation of rival Polish governments-in-waiting in 1944 through stalemates on Germany in early 1947 had already made difficult to bridge.
Division in effect can be construed as the third-best solution for both sides once it became likely that neither great power could impose its most desired solution (or even its second-best solution) on the whole continent. By "most desired" solution I mean a Europe from the Pyrenees to the Soviet border that would—depending on whether Moscow's or Washington's preferences prevailed—have been either Communist or non-Communist. Either of these results was precluded by the terms of the wartime coalition. Each side in the anti-Hitler alliance had too much need for the other simply to
Charles S. Maier
Michael Cox and Caroline Kennedy-Pipe provide a valuable survey of much of the historiography of the Marshall Plan, rightly understood to be a centerpiece of the early Cold War. Their essay raises important questions about post-revisionist accounts and interpretations and makes a useful contribution in discussing the role of the British and French in the events of 1947—a role that the American literature long overlooked but that some corrective literature then overstated. Their article also helpfully summarizes the debates among Soviet leaders about the value and pitfalls of accepting U.S. proposals in the immediate aftermath of George Marshall's speech.1
Nonetheless, the essay makes less innovative and original arguments than it purports to, and it does not adequately analyze the meaning of "dividing Europe." Cox and Kennedy-Pipe imply that "dividing Europe" is equivalent to starting the Cold War. I will argue that indeed the United States and its Western allies bear much of the responsibility for dividing Europe—but that the policy was in fact a strategy for an ideological and geopolitical conflict that was already emerging. The Marshall Plan confirmed a division that events from the formation of rival Polish governments-in-waiting in 1944 through stalemates on Germany in early 1947 had already made difficult to bridge.
Division in effect can be construed as the third-best solution for both sides once it became likely that neither great power could impose its most desired solution (or even its second-best solution) on the whole continent. By "most desired" solution I mean a Europe from the Pyrenees to the Soviet border that would—depending on whether Moscow's or Washington's preferences prevailed—have been either Communist or non-Communist. Either of these results was precluded by the terms of the wartime coalition. Each side in the anti-Hitler alliance had too much need for the other simply to