The British Foreign Office and American Foreign Policy, 1947–48

Abstract

On 21 February 1947, the US Government was informed of Britain's decision to terminate aid to Greece as from 31 March 1947. This produced a flurry of activity culminating in President Harry Truman's address to Congress on 12 March 1947 in which he requested $400m. aid for Greece and Turkey and pronounced the Truman Doctrine, thereby commiting the United States to the worldwide containment of Communism by means of American aid to nations threatened either by Communist insurgency from within or by Communist aggression from abroad. Debate on the Greek-Turkish Aid Bill and on the implications of the Truman Doctrine was one of the important sources of Secretary of State George C. Marshall's speech at Havard University on 5 June 1947 which initiated the idea of the Marshall Plan, the four year programme (1948–52) of American Aid to sixteen European nations designed to build up the economics of these countries and to lessen the prospect of Communism gaining strength within them. Was Britain's sudden withdrawal of aid from Greece determined simply by financial weakness, or did British policy have a more positive and subtle aim, namely to induce the United States to commit itself decisively to a policy of containment in both its political and economic form? The British Foreign Office papers for the late 1940s, as well as the papers of other government departments such as the Treasury, which are now open as a consequence of the thirty year rule, facilitate a better understanding of British policy in 1947–48 and of the British view of American policy in those years, in particular with regard to the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan.