The Marshall Non-Plan, Congress and the Soviet Union

Abstract

ISTORIANS of the cold war generally agree that the Marshall Plan was of pivotal significance in crystallizing the East-West conflict in Europe.L By the summer of 1947 the division of Europe was well advanced, though not necessarily irreversible. allied control machinery for Germany remained formally in place though reduced to the performance of nominal functions. Four-power negotiations on the German peace treaty continued through 1947 despite growing signs of deadlock as a result of the Moscow Conference in March and April. establishment of the Economic Commission for Europe in May 1947 provided an institutional basis for considering problems and approaches to recovery in a pan-European framework. In this setting, the Soviet refusal to participate in collective European planning to respond to the Marshall proposal, taking in its tow the East European countries as well, determined that U.S. recovery policy would henceforth proceed exclusively on a West European basis. solidification of a West European approach toward recovery, including the Western zones of Germany, aroused Soviet concerns and contributed to the tightening of Eastern bloc discipline, the formation of the Cominform, the breakdown of the ministerial negotiations on Germany, and the full consolidation of Communist power in Czechoslovakia. Thus, as Hadley Arkes argues, The Marshall Plan did more than any single measure to dissolve the ambiguity in EastWest tensions and consummate the Cold War.2