"Whether for better or worse, it was a big step towards the division of Europe," Mater says.

The Marshall Plan was crucial in bringing about "the division of Germany which so far has been a good thing for everyone, except perhaps the Germans," Lee says.

Lee adds that by requiring all the nations to agree to work together in order to get U.S. aid, the Marshall Plan effectively pulled in the French government which had been the most aggressively anti-German of the victorious European nations.

"It was a subtle sort of way of buying the French off by ensuring that German recovery would take place in an integrated European context," Lee says. Historians point to such crafty maneuvering as being exemplary of the genius of the policy.

Of course, the Soviets theoretically could have embraced Marshall's program of aid, a decision which would have changed dramatically the course of current super power relations.

"If the Russians had said `yes,' one might have had a less profound division in Europe. But then, if Stahn had wings he could have been an airplane," says Mater.

But Mater cautions that it would be wrong to view the plan as as a reactionary one, saying that its real audience was the center-left of Europe.

The Marshall Plan today is commonly referred to whenever talk surfaces of lending U.S. aid to support a foreign economy. However, most scholars and former statesmen agree with Dillon Professor of the Civilization of France Stanley Hoffmann, who says that while the Plan was "one of the best initiatives of the U.S.," it does not have "a hell of a lot of relevance for today."

Scholars say that post-war Europe was a special case, far different from Third World regions which are the commonly targeted areas for modern versions of Marshall's vision. To Hoffman the plan was aimed at rebuilding the West, "not laying the ground work for social and economic justice" in Third World nations.

The Marshall Plan worked because it provided much-needed dollars to European nations, which had a history of industrial development, and strong institutional tradition, Lee says.

Mater notes that the notion of applying a Marshall Plan in a Third World context would be misguided. "Development aid is different from the Marshall Plan was because you don't have the infra-structure [already in place]. You can't go into Sierra Leone or Bangladesh and do that," he says.

The foreign policy experts also say that the tremendous financial undertaking would never materialize in the present era. "In the immediate post-war period we were able to come forward with a major effort and spend 3 percent of our Gross National Product for the Marshall Plan. Today we can't get one half of one percent for such purposes," says Rusk.

Still, if the Marshall Plan was firmly rooted in the conditions of its time, many foreign policy experts and diplomatic historians say that today's leaders would do well to take instruction from the spirit guiding Marshall's goals.

As Hoffmann says, today the Soviets "are the ones taking the initiative."