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After six years of war, Europe lay devastated, with two crises especially urgent: a shortage of food and a shortage of coal for heating. During 1946-47, the average German lived on a semistarvation died of just 1,800 calories daily, and if the German people were slowly starving, some were quickly freezing as well. During the brutal winters of 1945, 1946, and 1947, hundreds, perhaps thousands died in homes unheated for lack of fuel.

Although the United States had begun sending aid and relief to all of Europe even before the end of the war (amounting to approximately $9 billion by early 1947), these efforts were not sufficient, and the hope that Britain and France would recover sufficiently and quickly enough to care for their own populations as well as extend aid to others proved illusory. The economies even of the European victors were shattered, and recovery was slow. The cycle of the entire European economy was stalled. Although farmers could still produce food, urban populations had no way to pay for it. Even if industrial plants were rebuilt, neither urbanites nor farmers could pay for the goods produced.

Among the various plans proposed to aid European recovery was that favored by George C. Marshall, army chief of staff throughout World War II and, in the administration of Harry S. Truman, secretary of state. He understood the intense humanitarian crisis gripping Europe, and he also well understood how the punitive terms of the Treaty of Versailles, which had ended World War I, created a general desperation that made the rise of a new dictator and another world war virtually inevitable. Marshall also believed that because Germany had been the most powerful industrial force in Europe before World War II, its current state of economic prostration was holding back the recovery of all Europe. Moreover, the universal devastation across the continent rendered even the Western nations vulnerable to intimidation and takeover by the Soviet Union. Truman, Marshall, and others believed that only a massive infusion of capital, intended to relieve the humanitarian crisis while also jump-starting the collective European economy, could help Europe recover and remain free of Soviet influence.

The program that the press dubbed the Marshall Plan was no giveaway. Marshall and Truman believed that the political, social, and economic fate of Europe hinged on overcoming motives of rivalry, vengeance, and nationalistic passions. To recover, they believed, Europeans would have to act with a unity they had never known before. Marshall believed that it was essential to make all of Europe, in collective agreement, responsible for determining just how the funds would be used. He proposed that the nations of Europe meet to formulate a unified plan for the disbursement and use of funds. No funds would be released until the plan had been made and presented. . .

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