Selling the Marshall Plan at Home: The Committee for the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovery

Abstract

Historians of the early Cold War period have given little attention to the efforts of members of nongovernmental organizations to influence foreign affairs. One such group, the Committee for the Marshall Plan to Aid European Recovery (CMP), founded in late September 1947, became the principal instrument through which the State Department persuaded Congress and the American people to sponsor a huge program for reconstructing postwar Europe.1 This ad hoc committee comprised a coalition of corporate and labor interests and a liberal elite closely linked to the internationalist “foreign policy establishment” associated with the Truman administration, as well as some key members of Congress.2 Although labeled a “citizens' organization,” the CMP was hardly independent of State Department influence and could be described as an external propaganda agency acting on behalf of the European Recovery Program (ERP). The sheer eminence of its members, with their frequent contact with congressmen and senators, and the perpetual public appearances of its most prominent supporters allowed the CMP to succeed in convincing Congress that the foreign policy establishment backed the Department of State and its plans for the ERP. In close cooperation with the State Department and the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, the CMP provided and briefed witnesses for congressional hearings, thus demonstrating well the paternalism of prominent internationalists in their efforts to “educate the public” when they held the support of public opinion to be necessary. To do this, CMP members employed tested techniques that seemed to reveal a strong public consent by the American people for the Marshall Plan that did not necessarily exist, except among themselves. The efforts of CMP members illustrate the importance of public opinion in foreign policy but also show very clearly how government and private interest groups could manipulate this “opinion” for their own purposes.3