70 years ago, a Harvard Commencement speech outlined the Marshall Plan, and calmed a continent
Seventy years ago, on June 5, 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall delivered a short, unadorned Commencement speech that seemed unremarkable to most listeners at the time. Yet it changed the world. The retired five-star general, credited during World War II with organizing the fastest and biggest military buildup in U.S. history, took just under 11 minutes to announce the creation of one of the largest international economic aid programs in history. Over the next four years, the United States delivered nearly $13 billion (in today’s dollars, $122 billion) in assistance to participating European nations under the European Recovery Program, soon known as the Marshall Plan. Those actions stabilized a continent riven by two world wars and exhausted by them. The Marshall Plan’s assistance benefited more than a dozen nations, steadied their economies, encouraged their cooperation, stemmed the spread of communism, and helped create the European Union that led to...