Table of Contents

1.  Preface  3

2.  The Marshall Plan - An Introduction  4

3.  The German Reaction to the Marshall Plan  6

3.1  Preliminary Remarks  6

3.2  German Reactions - The Press  7

3.3  German Reactions - The Surveys  9

3.4  German Reactions - The Viewpoints of the Parties  11

4.  The German Reception - Attempting to Explain  12

4.1  The Situation in Germany before the Marshall Plan  12

4.2  German Fears and Concerns  13

5.  Conclusion  16

6.  Literature  17

  Other sources  18

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1. Preface

On 5 June 1947, the US-Secretary of State, George C. Marshall, in his later famous speech at Harvard University proposed a reconstruction program for Europe. Ten months later, on 2 April 1948, the Foreign Aid Act was passed by the US Congress. Thus, the European Recovery Program (ERP), more commonly called the “Marshall Plan”, came into effect. It was the biggest ever project of international economic cooperation in times of peace. Between 1948 and 1952, the goods and services provided for Europe by the U.S. amounted to 13 billion dollars ¹ . Sixteen European nations took part in the program, and West Germany, after Great Britain, France, and Italy, was the fourth biggest receiver of American support ² . This money played a crucial role in creating the West German “Wirtschaftswunder” and integrating the country into the West.

Much has been written about the Marshall Plan, also from a German perspective. Its development, the institutions organising it and its consequences have all been described in detail by political scientists and historians alike. This paper sets a different focus and concentrates on the West German reception of the Marshall Plan. How did the West Germans react to the European Recovery Program, only three years after their ultimate defeat, with their economy destroyed, their cities bombed to rubble and their collective conscience having by no means confronted the guilt of Fascism? Was it really all “Freie Bahn dem Marshallplan ³ ”?

Up to now, this very aspect has been nearly unexplored, so there is not much literature about it. In any case, I have tried to base my essay on as many sources as possible to be able to offer a balanced analysis, my main sources for the German perspective being the books and articles by Berghahn, Foschepoth, Pommerin, and Wagner ⁴ . The essay is structured in such a way that, after a brief introduction to the subject, the German reception of the Marshall Plan will be overviewed in three different areas: The reactions in the press, the reactions in the opinion surveys that were conducted by the American occupation forces from 1946 onwards, and finally the viewpoints of the political parties. Subsequently, an attempt to explain the German reception will be provided by taking a closer look at the situation in Germany before the Marshall Plan and by analysing the different German fears and concerns about American

¹ Wagner (1996), p. 7.

² Ibid.

³ Slogan from an American propaganda poster that could be translated as “clear the way for the Marshall Plan” or “make way for the Marshall Plan”. B. Megele/SZ. In: Süddeutsche Zeitung 276 (2004).

⁴ This essay deals exclusively with the West German reaction to the Marshall Plan, so if not explicitly indicated otherwise, “Germany” will always refer to West Germany.

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economic policy, before coming to a conclusion. The time frame of the essay spans from 1947 to 1952.

2. The Marshall Plan - An Introduction

There has been a long discussion among historians what the main objective of the Marshall Plan in Europe was. Its most early (and most uncritical) students interpreted the Plan as a symbol and proof of American generosity. However, not before long, critical voices were heard too, the most prominent being that of William Appleman Williams. Williams, an American historian, became famous for his left-wing, some claim even Marxist interpretations. He argued that American politicians had exaggerated the threat of communism because they were fearful of losing the European markets. He also claimed that the Marshall Plan was nothing but American economic imperialism, an attempt to gain control over Western Europe (just as the Soviets controlled Eastern Europe) in the process of block construction. Williams was followed by a group of historians thinking along the same lines, who just like him rejected the old - and in their eyes hopelessly naïve - conviction of American goodwill. They held to the suspicion that the Americans only tried to tie Western Europe closer to them, that way ensuring the dominance of their own economic model and securing Germany as the most exposed region in its sphere of influence right at the Iron Curtain during the Cold War. This school came to be called the Revisionist and was at its peak during the 1960s and 1970s, also under the influences of the Vietnam War, which it rejected ⁵ .

However one may evaluate these different interpretations, for this essay, it is important to note that all these approaches and receptions of American policy existed already in post-war Germany, that is, in the period we are dealing with. Before the different historians had even started to write their analyses, the German press, the published opinions, the radio, and the people on the street had discussed most of these interpretations. Naturally, not everybody agreed on one single position. Nevertheless, there was one point that most contemporaries and writers which were consulted for this essay do agree upon: That the American influence was crucial, “profound” ⁶ and, in one word, indispensable. It has to be noted though that, just like everything in academic discourse, naturally also this position has an opposite: In the 1980s some historians had indeed started to argue that the Marshall Plan did not necessarily have

⁵ See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_Appleman_Williams.

⁶ “However, it is doubtful that change would have come so quickly after 1945, had it not been for the impact of an outside factor that had a profound influence on the development of the West German industrial system: the United States.” Berghahn (1995), p. 67f.

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such a big influence on Europe’s economies as everybody had always believed. The most prominent name in this context is that of the economic historian Alan S. Milward, who has pointed out that the growth in many European countries, including West Germany, actually picked up before the large-scale arrival of American aid, and was fastest among some of the countries that had received less help ⁷ . Subsequently there was the controversy about Werner Abelshauser’s research, which tended to downplay the significance of outside aid for the increase of the West German economy ⁸ . Today, however, common consensus acknowledges that the Marshall Plan had an enormous effect on Western Europe’s economies. In my opinion, the Marshall Plan’s political and economic goals are often so intertwined that they cannot be separated clearly. Nevertheless, it is true that the Marshall Plan was above all an economic program with a political goal, its first and vital significance being political, not economic. The Marshall Plan undoubtedly served the purpose of immunising Western Europe against communism and containing the Soviet Union ⁹ ; it was an economic way to fight communism. Wagner even argues that it became a vehemently anti-communist program after the Soviet Union had stepped out in July 1947, and that the ideological confrontation escalated ¹⁰ . The Americans had started to become very worried because local Communist and left-wing political parties were gaining parliamentary seats, especially in France and Italy. The US interest was therefore to construct a Europe that would hold a united front against the Soviet Union in the Cold War, and also one that would support the NATO, which had reactivated the military potential of Western Europe. Thus, the Marshall Plan can also be called a political alternative to the military logic. Although it had been announced as well as initiated quite early in the process of block construction, the Bizone ¹¹ had been already created (on 1 January 1947) and the Truman-Doctrine had already been declared (on 12 March 1947), so the direction of the subsequent events could already be foreseen.

Although, as it was stated above, the Marshall Plan’s fundamental significance was political and not economic, the USA also had clear economic objectives for Europe. In the post-war era, the American administration had come to the conclusion that the economic dimension was the most important in rebuilding a nation. This was quite a new idea, a lesson that had

⁷ See Milward, Alan S.: The Marshall Plan and German Foreign Trade. In: Maier (1991), p. 452-487.

⁸ See Abelshauser (1983), p. 54-63 and Berghahn (1995), p. 66.

⁹ „Eindämmung der Sowjetunion und ‚Immunisierung’ Westeuropas gegen den Kommunismus.“ Lehmann (2000), p. 70.

¹⁰ “Aber nach der Absage der Sowjetunion im Juli 1947 wurde aus dem Europäischen Wiederaufbauprogramm ein vehement antikommunistisches westeuropäisches Programm, die Konfrontation eskalierte.“ Wagner (1996), p. 7.

¹¹ The British and Americans had unified their activities in creating the Bizonal Economic Council, short Bizone. Interestingly, the director of that organisation was Ludwig Erhard, who would later become Minister for Economic Affairs in the first post-war cabinet of Konrad Adenauer, and in 1963, the second Chancellor of the Federal Republic of Germany.

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