Dean Rusk, who helped with the administration of the policy and later served as President Lyndon B. Johnson's Secretary of State, remembers the experience as "a great adventure."

In many ways the Marshall Plan was the product of perceived lessons from America's lack of involvement in the period leading up to the rise of Nazi Germany and the reasons for that rise.

Following the defeat of Germany in World War I, the United States retreated into an isolationist stance, extracting itself from the international scene. While some believed that Hitler had arisen from the ashes of a German nation treated too harshly by its conquerors nearly three decades before, others believed the relatively lenient enforcement of aspects of the Treaty of Versailles had permitted Germany to again pursue imperialistic aims.

"Germany coming out of World War I had 85 percent of the land it went into the war with, and its industrial base was intact," says Associate Professor of History Bradford A. Lee. "Germany was demilitarized to a certain degree, but the restrictions were not kept right by Britain and America who ??tired of imposing them."

Pastoralizing Germany

With these events in mind, Henry Morgenthau Jr., the Secretary of the Treasury under President Franklin D. Roosevelt '04, proposed a plan which, in the words of one historian, would "pastoralize" Germany.

The Morgenthau plan "enjoyed a very brief ascendancy," says Maier. "Morgenthau had a privileged access to Roosevelt. When people saw that the war was going to end quickly, Roosevelt briefly entertained the idea."

But as American victory become imminent, the Morgenthau plan to de-industrialize Germany was increasingly at odds with dominant opinion. By 1945 the plan "was only being taken seriously by Morgenthau himself," Lee says.

The Marshall Plan provided the first coherent articulation of what America's role would be, calling on the Europeans themselves to formulate an integrated strategy for recovery. The United States would then provide the necessary resources to meet the European needs.

"It would be neither fitting not efficacious for this government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe on its feet economically," Marshall said in his Commencement address. "This is the business of the Europeans."

The strategy of requiring the Europeans to work together to formulate their requests was a particularly shrewd element of the plan, for it forged a strong American-led alliance in Europe that presented a formidable obstacle to possible Soviet encroachment, scholars of the era say.

"The Marshall Plan was the basis for the alliance of Western democracies that has affected the balance of power until now," says Nye.

While the aid was offered to all European nations--including Soviet bloc countries--it was contingent upon each country committing itself to working with each other country, virtually precluding participation by countries under Stalin's control, according to the scholars.

The contingency forced the Soviet nations to in effect either agree to join hands with the U.S. or to commit themselves to go it alone, accelerating an antagonistic course which was already taking shape, historians say.

When the communist bloc turned its back on the plan, the division between East and West--and most notably between East and West Germany--which has persisted to this day was firmly entrenched.