Committee for the Marshall Plan
{{Infobox organization
| name = Committee for the Marshall Plan
| predecessor = Council on Foreign Relations, Brookings Institution (co-founders)
| merged =
| successor = George C. Marshall Foundation
| formation = October 1947
| founder =
| founding_location = 350 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10118
| extinction =
| merger =
| type =
| tax_id =
| registration_id =
| status =
| purpose = Promote Marshall Plan
| headquarters = 537 Fifth Avenue, New York NY 10017
| location =
| region =
| fields = U.S. Foreign Policy
| membership = voluntary
| membership_year =
| owner =
| sec_gen =
| leader_title = Henry L. Stimson
| leader_name = National Chairman
| leader_title2 = Robert P. Patterson
| leader_name2 = Executive Chairman
| leader_title3 = Hugh Moore
| leader_name3 = Treasurer
| leader_title4 = John H. Ferguson
| leader_name4 = Executive Director
| board_of_directors = Dean Acheson, Winthrop W. Aldrich, Frank Altschul, James B. Carey, David Dubinsky, Allen W. Dulles, Clark Eichelberger, William Emerson, Herbert Feis, Alger Hiss, Herbert H. Lehman, Frederick C. McKee, Arthur W. Page, Philip D. Reed, Herbert Bayard Swope, Mrs. Wendell Willkie
}}
The Committee for the Marshall Plan, also known as Citizens' Committee for the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovery, was a short-term organization established to promote passage of the European Recovery Program known as the Marshall Plan – which "fronted for a State Department legally barred from engaging in propaganda."
{{cite book
| first = Barry F.
| last = Machado
| title = In Search of a Usable Past: The Marshall Plan and Postwar Reconstruction Today
| publisher = Marshall Foundation
| url = https://marshallfoundation.org/library/collection/in-search-of-a-usable-past/#!/collection=342
| pages = 15 (Rathole), 19–20 (State Department propaganda)
| date = 2007
| accessdate = 30 October 2017}}
{{cite book
| first = Michael J.
| last = Hogan
| title = The Marshall Plan: America, Britain and the Reconstruction of Western Europe, 1947-1952
| publisher = Cambridge University Press
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=wVp0UsB1ITIC
| page = 98
| date = 1987
| accessdate = 30 October 2017| isbn = 9780521378406
{{cite book
| first = Theodore L.
| last = Wilson
| title = The Marshall Plan: An Atlantic Venture of 1947–1951 and How It Shaped Our World
| publisher = Foreign Policy Association
| pages =
| date = 1977
{{cite book
| first = Imanuel
| last = Wexler
| title = The Marshall Plan Revisited: The European Recovery Program in Economic Perspective
| publisher = Greenwood Press
| pages = 32–33
| date = 1983
{{cite book
| first = Harry Bayard
| last = Price
| title = Marshall Plan and Its Meaning
| publisher = Cornell University Press
| url = https://books.google.com/books?id=WwHsAAAAMAAJ
| pages = 55–57
| date = 1955
| accessdate = 30 October 2017}}
The committee disbanded not long after April 3, 1948, when U.S. President Harry S. Truman signed the Marshall Plan into law, which granted $5 billion in aid to 16 European nations.
Opposition to the Marshall Plan
{{See also|Marshall Plan#Passage in Congress}}
Postwar anti-Communism, pullback to American isolationism, and general conservative backlash led U.S. Republican Party politicians like U.S. Representatives Howard Buffett of Nebraska and Fred Busby of Illinois to oppose the Marshall Plan, which Buffett called "Operation Rathole".
History
The Citizens' Committee for the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovery formed in late October 1947. Its leaders were prominent liberal Eastern internationalists, members of the Council on Foreign Relations and Brookings Institution, a balance of bipartisan politicians, and labor leaders. Major donors included John D. Rockefeller.
Awareness of the Marshall Plan was already rising from July to December 1947, but the committee felt the need to propagandize.
To sway public opinion, the committee advertised, issued various documents (press releases, editorials, policy papers), sponsored radio broadcasts, hired speakers bureaus. Targets included women's clubs, church councils, and public affairs groups. Dean Acheson went on his own speaking tour, which included Palo Alto, Portland, Spokane, Minneapolis, and Duluth. Message focused on American idealism, self-interest, and ideology–particularly, humanitarian and economic concerns. Legislative efforts included an interim aid bill. In January 1948, debate and hearings geared up and ran through June 1948. The Harriman Committee made a report, and the committee sent private organizations as witnesses, of which 26 members were committee members themselves. The Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia worked in the committee's favor, but it did not adopt a strong "bulwark against Communism" position but rather avoided the topic of Communism.
On November 16, 1947, Alger Hiss published an essay that appeared on four pages of The New York Times Sunday Magazine, entitled "The Basic Question in The Great Debate." One of its five arguments was to answer the question "Why should we support socialist governments?" He summarized by writing, "Essentially the answer to this fifth question lies in the fact that the freely chosen governments of western Europe are the governments with which we must deal if we are to prevent economic chaos. We have no alternative." He also argued, "No country of Western Europe is at present fully socialistic or even 50 per cent socialistic in its control of economic life."
{{cite news
| first = Alger
| last = Hiss
| authorlink = Alger Hiss
| title = Basic Questions in the Great Debate; Here are the five most often asked about the Marshall Plan -- and an attempt to answer them
| newspaper = New York Times
| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1947/11/16/archives/basic-questions-in-the-great-debate-here-are-the-five-most-often.html
| page = SM7
| date = 16 November 1947
| accessdate = 22 May 2020}}
Passage by the House and Senate of the Foreign Assistance Act (HR 329–74, SR 69–17) helped.
After cartoonist Munro Leaf volunteered his skills to the State Department's Office of Public Affairs, he wrote a book published by the Committee for the Marshall Plan in 1947, titled Who Is the Man Against the Marshall Plan?, a Bibliography of Basic Official Documents.{{cite journal|last=Wala|first=Michael|date=July 1986|title=Selling the Marshall Plan at Home: The Committee for the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovery|journal=Diplomatic History|volume=10|issue=3|pages=247–265|issn=0145-2096|doi=10.1111/j.1467-7709.1986.tb00460.x}}Leaf, Munro, Who Is the Man Against the Marshall Plan, Committee for the Marshall Plan, 1947
Organization
The committee's headquarters was in the Empire State Building, 350 Fifth Avenue, New York, New York, 10118, then 537 Fifth Avenue, New York, 10017, with offices in Washington, D.C., and regional or local chapters (e.g., Baltimore, Philadelphia).
Of the committee's executive board members,{{cite web|last1=Patterson|first1=Robert P.|title=Committee for the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovery|url=http://www.columbia.edu/cu/lweb/digital/collections/rbml/.../ldpd_leh_0716_0027.pdf|website=Columbia.edu|accessdate=24 February 2018}}{{Dead link|date=November 2019 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }} eight served on the Council on Foreign Relations, of which another two were members of the BAC, CED, or NPA{{clarify|reason=what are these abbreviations?|date=November 2017}} – Allen Dulles (Council on Foreign Relations) and Philip Reed (Chairman of General Electric).
The national chairman was Henry L. Stimson and the executive director was John H. Ferguson. On April 2, 1948, the day before Truman signed the Marshall Plan into law, the members of the Executive Committee were:
- Robert P. Patterson, chair
- Hugh Moore, Treasurer
- Dean Acheson
- Winthrop W. Aldrich
- Frank Altschul
- James B. Carey
- David Dubinsky
- Allen Dulles, president of the Council on Foreign Relations
- Clark Eichelberger
- William Emerson
- Herbert Feis
- Alger Hiss, president of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace
- Herbert H. Lehman
- Frederick C. McKee, Pittsburgh manufacturer and philanthropist
- Arthur W. Page
- Philip D. Reed, chairman of General Electric
- Herbert Bayard Swope
- Mrs. Wendell Willkie
Other members included Robert Gordon Sproul
{{cite web
| title = Robert Gordon Sproul: Systemwide
| publisher = University of California - Calisphere
| url = http://texts.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb1199n68c;NAAN=13030&doc.view=frames&chunk.id=div00088&toc.depth=1&toc.id=&brand=calisphere
| accessdate = 30 October 2017}} and Katharine Marston Seabury, chair of the "women's division."
{{cite news
| title = Mrs. William Marston Seabury, Worker for World Causes, Dies
|newspaper = New York Times
| date = 2 February 1971
| page = 40
| url = https://www.nytimes.com/1971/02/02/archives/mrs-william-marston-seabury-workeror-world-causes-dies.html
| accessdate = 22 May 2020}}