#96 - Marshall Plan III

What this episode covers

* America’s approach to providing financial aid wasn’t popular with some of their allies either. * Ernest Bevin, the British Foreign Secretary, resented American dollar diplomacy, in particular the linking of desperately needed financial assistance to London’s submission on political matters central to British sovereignty. * The American loan agreement, signed in December 1945 after nearly four months of difficult and often humiliating negotiations in Washington, required Britain to accept American air and naval bases on British and Commonwealth territory. * Bevin’s decision to support the manufacture of British nuclear weapons was driven not by a German or Soviet threat, but by his belief that the country “could not afford to acquiesce in an American monopoly of the new development.” * So, in other words - he wanted the UK to have nuclear powers to defend themselves against America. * Britain, as Bevin saw his country, was “the last bastion of social democracy,” standing against both “the red tooth and claw of American capitalism and the Communist dictatorship of Soviet Russia.” * This is coming from a country that, until recently, had imperial control over 25% of the world. * Mmmmm smell that social democracy. * Another recent ally was also suspicious. * Russia. * The Kremlin was receiving a constant flow of intelligence from highly placed British sources—among whom Guy Burgess at the Foreign Office in London and Donald Maclean at the British embassy in Washington. * Maclean, who had access to all of the embassy’s classified cable traffic, was reporting that “the goal of the Marshall Plan was to ensure American economic domination of Europe.” * The spies also warned Stalin that the Brits and Americans were getting ready to announce that they were going to renege on the Yalta agreement regarding reparations. * They were going to cut off German reparations to the USSR, which at the time was the Soviet’s only source of foreign income. * Instead, they were going to re-build Germany. * Well the parts under their control, anyway. * And the Marshall Plan aid was to be implemented outside the United Nations framework, because they wanted some of it to go to Germany - and Germany was not a member of the U.N. * And the Soviets needed the German money and goods to finance their efforts to control Eastern Europe. * And - in the early stages, the ERP funds were going to be offered to Eastern European countries and even the U.S.S.R. * The United States offered immense grants of cash and material aid to all of the European nations, not just those in the West, on the sole condition that the recipient nations agree upon a common economic plan to use these resources. * Of course, this economic plan had to be based upon market capitalism, a stipulation not mentioned formally in the proposal but obvious nevertheless. * Eastern European nations that accepted the American offer, as many were initially keen to do, would therefore have become incorporated into the American economic system, gravitating naturally into the U.S. orbit as their material fate became dependent upon American, not Russian, alliance. * In addition, the terms of the Marshall Plan, when released, as we’ve discussed, gave the Americans a very high degree of say in how the money was spent. * And it forced the recipients to buy products from American companies. * And to give up their own funds for the Americans to spend however they saw fit. * SPECIAL PROVISIONS: The Administrator is authorized to use funds made available to promote an increase in production in participating countries of materials required by the U. S. where there are actual or potential shortages in the U. S. * This involved strategic goods needed for military purposes, and it prevented recipients from selling these things to Moscow or Eastern European cou Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

PodParley-generated summary based on available episode metadata and transcript content.