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The Most Noble Adventure

God bless America

Greg Behrman
Aurum, 464pp, £25,

Margaret MacMillan

Wednesday, 11th June 2008

Margaret McMillan on the new book by Greg Behrman

The Most Noble Adventure contains a striking pair of photographs of the business district in Hamburg. The first, taken in 1945, shows shattered buildings, clouds of smoke and a virtually empty street. Five years later, the same scene is transformed. The damage has largely been repaired and the sidewalks are filled with well-dressed pedestrians. Was this extraordinary recovery, representative of what was happening all over Western Europe, a result of the Marshall Plan which pumped billions of dollars of American aid into a war-torn Europe? Or was it bound to happen sooner or later, once Europeans recovered their nerve and their will?

It is now 20 years since Alan Milward challenged the conventional wisdom that the Marshall Plan did indeed save Western Europe from economic catastrophe and quite possibly a Communist takeover. Curiously, in an otherwise admirable book, Greg Behrman relegates what has been a lively and important debate to his footnotes — yet it has considerable relevance for today. The Marshall Plan is widely seen, particularly in the United States, as a model of how to kick-start economic recovery and strengthen democracy. How often, for example, have we heard calls for a Marshall Plan for Africa?

Behrman’s own opinion is that conveyed in his title. Without the Marshall Plan, Western Europe might well have become part of the Soviet empire and the European Union another failed dream of those Europeans like Jean Monnet who were able to look beyond narrow national interests. And he makes a compelling case. While much of Europe, particularly in the west, still had the tools at its disposal — from an educated population to surprisingly resilient political and social structures — to rebuild itself, it did not seem so at the time. Europeans feared that their civilisation was finished and American observers tended to agree. The war had destroyed cities, factories, ports, railways, dams and mines. Millions of people were homeless or living in makeshift shelters. Farmers could not get enough seed to plant; in any case how were they to get their produce to markets? The weather piled on more misery. The winter of 1946-47 was one of the coldest in memory and the following summer brought widespread drought. While many in Europe sank into apathy and despair, the Communists under Stalin’s malevolent direction saw an opportunity to seize power.

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