European nations

The peoples of western Europe had, first of any region of the world, evolved a strong awareness of national identity and constituted themselves nation-states. The promise and the disillusionment of nationalism had become part of the fabric of European life.

But twice in the twentieth century these states had fought brutal wars. They had created vast colonial empires, which to many Europeans appeared to embody the superiority of their civilization (and to some, on the contrary, demonstrated the arrogance of Western racism). The end of the Second World War proved the turning point in their histories. Empires were abandoned to focus energies on their countries' reconstruction. In the following decades, their leaders agreed to sacrifice the principle of the absolute independence of their nation-states for the sake of economic development and, most important, of cooperation among previously warring states. In a real sense, 1945 marked the beginning in Europe of a "Second Twentieth Century."

Reconstruction and Reform

The destruction of western Europe, that is, the areas outside the Soviet-dominated lands, had appeared so serious and its consequences so threatening to political stability that the U.S. government had promised in 1947 massive economic assistance for reconstruction (see Chapter 6). This Marshall Plan was an extraordinary event, not only in the foreign relations of the United States, but in the relations of the European states among themselves and with their former wartime ally.

The United States had to abandon its longtime isolationism; European governments had to agree to collaborate publicly in making crucial decisions about how vast sums of aid were to be spent. The billions of dollars worth of aid (ultimately over $13 billion) came under strict conditions. Most important was the requirement that all states participating in the program make public their economic needs in a European-wide committee, called the Commission on European Economic Cooperation (CEEC). It had to make the painful choices of priorities in recommending the areas where U.S. aid was to go. While other ideas of renewal emerged in, those painful years, the Marshall Plan's approach came with an immediate payoff. The aid proved effective beyond the highest hopes of its planners. By 1952, industrial production in western Europe, even in West Germany, had surpassed the prewar level. The ruins of war gradually disappeared, and food rationing finally came to an end. The future direction of Europe's economy was clearly marked out as well.

The immediate goal of the aid was economic recovery. The larger aim was to encourage social and political stability in independent states within a global economy. Marshall proposed that the United States provide large sums of fi nancial aid, as well as economic supplies, to those governments ready to meet certain conditions. Chief among them was the requirement that they coordinate their efforts and make public their financial and economic needs. This Marshall Plan committed the United States to the expansion of the international economy and to the improvement

of economic conditions of distant countries, without any specific diplomatic rewards or expectation of repayment. These new po1icies turned the United States away from isolationism and toward involvement in the international affairs of Europe and Asia.

Although the funds were not approved until mid-1948, the offer received immediate support from all Western countries. The Soviet Union and its satellites refused the aid – on Stalin's orders and after Poland and Czechoslovakia, both under communist leadership, had first accepted. The Marshall Plan was not overtly anti-communist; the Truman Doctrine was. Together they altered the very basis of relations with the Soviet Union, for they brought the economic resources and potential military might of the United States to bear on areas where the line between Soviet and Western spheres of influence remained vague. The refusal of Marshall Plan aid by eastern European states made clear that Europe was split in two.

THE COLD WAR IN THE WEST

By the winter of 1947-1948, nothing remained of the Grand Alliance. Negotiations had ceased and had been replaced on both sides by public denunciations. The United States launched a massive program of economic aid to Europe, coupled with shipments of armaments to Greece and Turkey. Stalin remade the Soviet sphere of domination into a Soviet empire, where all important policies were decided in Moscow. Actual military conflict did not occur, but the talk was of war between the superpowers. From the perspective of several decades we can conclude that

Stalin never intended a military offensive against the West. To that extent Western fears were exaggerated. He did, however, make use of the international position of strength acquired in the German war to extend the diplomatic and political powers of his state far beyond its borders. He thereby contributed most of all to the failure of the peace.

Western fears of Soviet military aggression also played a part in the growing hostility between East and West. American leaders magnified Soviet military strength beyond its real level and argued that it, plus Soviet communism, was proof of Soviet- aggressive intentions. Partly because they needed to win American support, partly because they mistook Soviet power politics for revolutionary communism, their new policy became a global struggle against communist expansionism. Out of this impasse emerged military alliances and the arms race.