GMF - The German Marshall Fund of the United States - Strengthening Transatlantic Cooperation

Marshall Memorial Convocation speech by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt
Sanders Theatre, Harvard University, June 5, 1972

Thanking America
Twenty-Five Years After the Announcement of the Marshall Plan

History does not too often give us occasion to speak of fortunate events. But here in this place a quarter of a century ago an event took place which could rightly be termed one of the strokes of providence of this century, a century which has not so very often been illuminated by the light of reason.

We are gathered here at this ceremony to commemorate the speech with which George Marshall announced 25 years ago that plan which was to become one of the most formidable and at the same time successful achievements of the United States of America. I have no authority to speak for any country other than my own, but I know, and I want the American people to know: our gratitude, the gratitude of Europeans, has remained alive.

What we give in return is our growing ability to be a partner of the United States and in addition, apart from regulating our own affairs, to assume our share of responsibility in the world at large.

To go back to the beginning: if happiness is a concept in which mankind perceives an objective, then in our epoch it has for long stretches remained in the shadow. The era of my generation was a concentration of

more darkness, more bitterness and more suffering than nations have ever before brought upon themselves. Against this background the act we are commemorating here today shines brilliantly.

Two world wars, which were first and foremost civil wars in Europe, plunged our civilization into the abyss of self-destruction. Ten million times in the first, more than fifty million times in the second catastrophe, our individual and irreplaceable human life was destroyed — on the battlefield, in air-raid shelters, in camps, by firing squads, in the gas chambers, or by sheer starvation.

And the most depressing part of it is that this century is laden with the stigma of names that have become the ciphers of ruin, names denoting the nameless ravaging of souls, and that tell us that hell on earth was a reality. We have known since then that

man is capable of revolting collectively against any moral commandment and of surrendering that quality with which he was born: his ability to be human.

We cannot and do not want to shake off this experience. Nor our awareness of the threat that accompanies us day by day in the form of the multiplication of the means of destruction capable of snuffing out our whole civilization if they slip from our control. If we are no longer the master of that difficult peace we have today, that peace which we regard as our day-to-day task but also as the ultima ratio of our existence. For this we have learnt (and I said this six months ago in Oslo): war has become the ultima irratio of this century.

There are many who had forethoughts of this. One of them was George Catlett Marshall. He was a soldier. In other words he served a profession which presupposes constant readiness for war with all its consequences. I put it that plainly because it brings into even greater relief the exemplary achievement of this man. That achievement was underlined by the award of the Nobel Prize for Peace.

He was a soldier out of passion. But this word has a double meaning. In this case it is the passion and energy with which Marshall discharged the duties of his profession. It also includes his readiness to suffer and to share the suffering of others, a quality indispensable in a good soldier and man of character.

As a young staff officer charged with complicated strategic and logistical duties, he witnessed the first mass loss of life at St. Mihiel and in the Argonne Forest in France in 1917 and 1918. We know that this experience marked his life. It did not cause him to falter in the steadiness of purpose which characterized the stages in his career during the interval of that precarious peace between the cease-fire of Compiegne and the 1st of September 1939 — that 1st of September when the German attack was launched against Poland and when George Marshall became Chief of Staff of the United States Army. Acting upon the instructions of his President, he took steps to ensure that the United States was heavily armed in its neutrality. Yet it was clear to him that America for a second time would be challenged to decide Europe’s destiny. He was known as the organizer of victory. His circumspection and his exact yet imaginative strategy were the mathematics of the campaigns and battles upon which the Third Reich and the crazed policies of its leaders crumbled.

The end was bitter, and not only for the vanquished. Victories, too, can be bitter, especially if they carry the seed of future conflicts. As in 1918, when the war was won, and peace was lost for want of reason on the part of the winners and the losers: through stubborn mistrust on the one side; through resentment of the humiliated on the other. Against the wish of its President, the United States left Europe to itself, left it prone to the animosities and jealousies born of national pride which did not cease to exist when the nations laid down their arms.

That time America’s political and military leaders, faithful to the traditions of their fathers, felt that their duty was to withdraw and abstain from further international involvement. But in fact that was no longer possible and apparently no longer permissible.

It was different in 1945: George Marshall and others agreed that victory did not relieve his country of its responsibility. The United States did not for one moment claim that responsibility for itself. It shared it with its Allies, in particular with Britain, which in 1940, putting up a lone resistance, refused to surrender its freedom. And with France, who, despite being sorely wounded, picked herself up again. But not least with the Soviet Union, which had fought tenaciously, and suffered particularly heavy losses, and which now found the door to Central Europe thrown open as a result of Hitler’s war.

The understanding between the big powers called for their joint exercise of responsibility. But even before the war was over the victorious powers quarrelled over who should exercise influence over the liberated countries. Defeated Germany then became both the cause and the object of the cold war. For a second time it seemed that hardly had the fighting stopped, than peace was lost in the clash of power interests and ideological conflict.

In that desperate situation President Harry Truman recalled General Marshall from retirement and appointed him Secretary of State; that was on 21 January 1947. Not as Chief of Staff for the Cold War, as many might have feared, but as the man who, having organized the war, was now looked upon to organize peace.

The world hoped for and expected a constructive answer from the United States to the challenge of despair, helplessness and distress, but also the will to live, that had not become extinct in the hearts of the nations of Europe. Creative spirits on both sides of the Atlantic, who realized that no more time should be lost, had long been at work in providing that answer. The plan which bears the name of George Marshall was forged from many ideas and suggestions. Sober analysis of the absurd situation in Europe after the Moscow Conference of April 1947 converged with the determination to act before that terrible “too late” could be uttered.

The European Recovery Program which the Secretary of State outlined here 25 years ago contained a sincere offer to restore collective East-West responsibility for Europe. The East rejected that offer, and that meant the widening and cementing of division. As you know, in those days I was in Berlin and I say quite openly here that Ernst Reuter and I by no means found it easy to recognize this painful reality. We deplored the division of the Continent, of our country, of our own city. We could not cede our will for unity to the advocates of nationalistic protest. But on no account did we want to give up the chance afforded by our regained freedom. We had to pit our will to assert ourselves against the danger of paralysis.

Berlin became the cradle of German-American friendship. The refusal to resign itself to the situation became the basis for future partnership. At the same time, the help we received to help ourselves could only benefit the countries of Western Europe, and that became a turning point in international relations.

In speaking of this assistance I do not overlook the help given in various ways by private charitable organizations, who commenced their activities even before the hostilities were over. I cannot emphasize too highly the moral support which came from their assistance then and in future years.

The Marshall Plan mobilized American reserves to provide Western Europe with the capital and raw materials it needed to regain its vitality. That program explicitly included defeated Germany. It was not only that magnanimity that is part of America’s nature, and not only the willingness to help which is characteristic of the people of this country, that inspired the leaders of the most powerful nation in the world to come to the aid of the defeated. It was, of course, also a political calculation which looked beyond the current state of affairs to the horizons of coming decades. By this I mean more than that America understandably thought about its position in relation to the Soviet Union: I mean above all that the Marshall Plan challenged the European partners to enter into close economic co-operation. Inherent in the Plan was also an appeal for a common political course.

That was the basic element of the program which without hesitation I would say bears the mark of genius. It traced, though tentatively, the aims of European, or at least West European, unity. It was more than the release of economic dynamism, more than the rekindling of industrial vitality which produced miracles, not only in the Federal Republic of Germany after the currency reform. Every nation of Western Europe showed in its own way that it possessed the unbroken will to work and pull itself up again, a will that had only waited to be sparked off.

With his Plan George Marshall roused Europe’s stifled self-confidence. He gave many citizens of the old continent a concrete stimulus to bring down from the stars the vision of a Europe united in lasting peace. The first step towards that aim was the OEEC, the Organization for European Economic Co-operation. The progressive thinkers in France, Italy, the

Netherlands, Britain and Germany were prepared for this change. The most outstanding among them was Jean Monnet. He was in fact Marshall’s partner in Europe. That great Frenchman and European saw more clearly than others the need for modern economic planning on a wide scale, an asset that was partly attributable to his precise knowledge of the American reality. He knew that national frontiers had to be removed or at least made bridgeable if the Continent was to be revitalized. The Schuman Plan, which by merging the coal and steel industries in the Western part of

our Continent was a significant first step to the joint organization of its economic energies, was inspired by this great man. His progressive determination coincided with the realistic instinct of three conservative statesmen whose European consciousness was embedded in the folds of history that lay deeper than the ideal of the nation state: Robert Schuman, Konrad Adenauer and Alcide de Gasperi.

Marshall Plan, OEEC and the Coal and Steel Community — and together with them the cessation of a negative occupation policy as manifest in the dismantling of industry — were the first stageposts of that European renaissance, a term I prefer to the “German miracle”, which was really a European one.

This leads us to ponder a little more the ties that link America inseparably with the destiny of the old Continent. It was James Monroe who said that the new world would restore the equilibrium of the old. He has been proved right — in spite of the latent isolationist tendencies in America that are sometimes traced back to his doctrine. When he spoke of this equilibrium he in fact anticipated the reality we now aspire to through our transatlantic partnership.

In one of his early political writings, Thomas Mann described the Atlantic as the “new Mediterranean” and ascribed to the nation on this side of the ocean the legacy of ancient Rome. Ingenious comparisons of this kind fire our imagination; yet we are conscious of their dubiousness. Nowhere has the United States been prescribed an imperial destiny along classical lines, and past decades have proved that Europe, contrary to all the pessimistic oracles, was by no means doomed for decline as ancient Greece.

On the contrary: the Marshall Plan was productive proof that America needs a self- confident Europe capable of forming a common political will. The United States is waiting for us Europeans to create the institutions capable of acting in our joint name. It waits for Europe to grow into an equal partner with whom it can share the burden of responsibility for world affairs. This we are patiently trying to do by seeking to enlarge and develop the Community which, now with the inclusion of Britain, but also Ireland, Denmark and Norway, is in the process of creating an economic and monetary union and of establishing closer political co-operation.

I may add that America’s impatience over the slow progress being made in this direction is to some extent understandable. But that impatience was based on the wrong premise; it was erroneous to believe that Europe could reproduce what had become a reality in the United States.

In Europe the idea was not to level off national entities; rather to preserve their identities whilst at the same time combining their energies to form a new whole. The idea was, and still is, to organize Europe in such a way that it will remain European.

Yet however tightly Western Europe may grow together, America will not be able to sever its European links. It will not be able to forget that the Western part of the Old World

will remain an area of vital interest to it, a relevant conclusion reached by Walter Lippmann from his fifty years’ experience as a critical observer of world affairs.

The nations of East and South East Europe, in spite of their less favorable starting position and conditions, have also given an impressive performance of reconstruction and modernization. Thus we should not underestimate the possibilities for co-operation across the whole of Europe that may arise in the years ahead. Are we, after all, not now progressing beyond our bilateral experiences towards a conference on security and co- operation in Europe with the participation of the United States and Canada? And though euphoria would be quite out of place in this connection it would be unwise not to take any opportunity that holds out the prospect of success, however slight.

It is general knowledge that the Federal Republic of Germany is endeavoring to contribute in its own specific way to the improvement of relations and to the consolidation of peace in Europe. But our policy of conciliation and understanding with Eastern Europe could not for one moment mean that Europe and the United States would move apart. On the contrary: the will for détente is a joint program of the Atlantic Alliance.

With the treaties of Moscow and Warsaw, to which several other agreements will be added, the Federal Republic of Germany has not only honored its pledge to seek reconciliation, in which we see a moral duty, it has in fact returned after a period of unclarity to the main stream of the will of the world, which commands East and West to relax the cramped positions and ease the permanent strain of the cold war. In pursuing this aim we have never lost sight of the dictates of security, including military security.

The Atlantic Community has truly acquired a new dynamism. It has developed into the entity prescribed for it by its founders: an Alliance for peace, an Alliance both militarily prepared and capable of negotiating without cherishing illusions. The Alliance remains the basis of our plans and of our actions. Its reliability has encouraged our French and British friends, and ourselves, to remind our neighbors in the East that behind the barriers of power interest and spheres of influence, behind the ineffaceable delimitations of ideological differences, behind the irreconcilability of social concepts, there waits the new reality of a larger Europe which should be capable of harmonizing its interests under the banner of peace.

Our parliamentary debate over the treaties of Moscow and Warsaw was hard. It has shown that the process of detente can only be enhanced by a steadfast and sober policy. Our courage to accept realities should express itself in this sobriety: a sense of reality which other nations have too often found lacking in the Germans. We need this sense of reality more urgently than ever before, for to liquidate the cold war really means to close the accounts of the Second World War.

In this phase of change America’s presence in Europe is more necessary than ever. I trust that those who carry responsibility in this country will not refuse to appreciate this. American-European partnership is indispensable if American does not want to neglect its

own interests and if our Europe is to forge itself into a productive system instead of again becoming a volcanic terrain of crisis, anxiety and confusion. The forms of the American commitment may change, but an actual disengagement would cancel out a basic law of our peace. It would be tantamount to abdication. We want our American friends to know, however, that we have viewed with anything but indifference the heavy external and internal burdens which they have had to carry during this period. The fact that America does not repress its critical problems but faces up to them unsparingly is in our eyes proof of its unbroken strength. And the fact that it does not take them lightly does not weaken but rather increases our sympathy and the reliability of our partnership.

1947 marked the beginning of the cold war, not because but in spite of the Marshall Plan. The situation resulting from the cold war is one of the bitter realities with which America, like Europe, still has to contend today. The results of the Marshall Plan have among other things enabled us, 25 years after its proclamation, to embark on a policy which has made 1972 a year which may one day perhaps likewise be regarded as a turning-point in world politics.

President Nixon has signed agreements with the leaders of the Soviet Union intended to reduce the confrontation and to mark out clearly the areas of co-operation. Europe in particular can but benefit from the introduction of stabilizing factors in the relations between the two superpowers, which lead to greater security.

President Nixon has rightly attributed worldwide significance to the Quadripartite Agreement on Berlin which entered into force two days ago. It is the result of a great common achievement that West Berlin has been able to survive all the crisis of a quarter of a century and that now, its link with the Federal Republic being no longer in question, it can look to a secure future.

This also means – and this is a fact not yet appreciated everywhere – that the presence of the United States in the center of Europe, unlimited in point of time, has been confirmed with the consent of the Soviet Union.

Moreover, one of our greatest tasks in the years ahead will be not to increase but to limit, and where possible reduce, the mightiest destructive potential that ever was on the soil of Europe, and to do so on both sides, in East and West. If we can together limit our armaments – mutually and balanced – instead of building up our arsenals in a race against each other there may be opened up the perspectives that will lead to co- operation between East and West in Europe.

If we can now carefully prepare a conference on security and co-operation in Europe it is an expression of the reality that the United States will participate as a power without which there can be no security in Europe. To have recognized this reality is an important contribution by the Soviet leaders.

By dint of hard work and with American support Western Europe is now back on its own feet. With the aid of the United States it has again found its own personality. Thus we in Europe, and especially we in the Federal Republic, are deeply indebted to this country.

But in this hour let us not only look backwards. Let the memory of the past become our mission of the future, let us accept the new challenge and perceive the new opportunity: peace wherever possible through co-operation.

Let me stress once again that to build this structure we need the United States, its commitment, its guarantee and its co-operation.

It is precisely now that we need increasing understanding for our partners on both sides of the Atlantic. The Federal Republic of Germany wishes to help bring this about. It is the expression of our special gratitude for the decision 25 years ago not to keep us out. It is an expression of our conviction that we can achieve peace only jointly and by co-operation.

On the occasion of the 25th anniversary of the announcement of the European Recovery Program by Secretary of State George Marshall, we, my colleagues representing all parties of our Parliament, and I, wish to inform you of several measures taken by the Federal Republic of Germany with a view to closer understanding between partners on both sides of the Atlantic in the seventies and eighties.

1. The German Federal Government has established the financial basis for the setting up of a German Marshall Plan Memorial in the United States. A fund has meanwhile been incorporated and constituted in the District of Columbia as an independent American Foundation: “The German Marshall Fund of the United States – A Memorial to the Marshall Plan”. Its bylaws have been adopted, its board members and officers elected.

The Federal Government undertakes to provide the Fund with 150 million Deutschmarks to be paid over the next fifteen years in installments of 10 million Deutschmarks due on the 5th of June of each year. All parties represented in the German Bundestag approved the Government’s appropriation bill for these funds.

Under the arrangements made between the German Government and the Fund’s Board of Directors, the German Marshall Fund will administer its proceeds without any influence by German authorities, and will use them to promote American-European study and research projects.

There will be three main areas on which the Fund will concentrate its interest:

(a) the comparative study of problems confronting advanced industrial societies in Europe, North America and other parts of the world;

(b) the study of problems of international relations that pertain to the common interests of Europe and the United States;

(c) support for the field of European studies.

2. Upon the suggestion of the Federal Government, the program of West European Studies of Harvard University will receive this year a non-recurring grant of three million Deutschmarks from the German Marshall Fund to establish a “German Marshall Memorial Endowment” for the promotion of European study projects.

3. The German Government has always attached special significance to exchanges with the United States in the field of science. This is also reflected in the consistent support it has given to the German-American Fulbright Program. So as to make it more effective the German Government has decided to increase its financial contribution substantially above the amount expected of it as a matching contribution, – from the present two million to three and a half million Deutschmarks per year.

4. In order to improve co-operation in specialized fields between American and German research institutes, the German Government has adopted a sponsorship program for the exchange of highly-qualified American and German scientists. ‘The German Ministry of Education and Science will earmark five million Deutschmarks per year for this exchange program.

5. The Donors’ Association for German Science, an institution established by German industrial and commercial firms, has undertaken to replenish by two and a half million Deutschmarks a year the amount made available by the Federal Government for the sponsorship program. These additional funds will be used for exchanges of scholars in the field of the humanities.

Ladies and gentlemen, we in the Federal Republic of Germany hope that these measures will have a beneficial effect on our partnership. And thus we follow up on the will for common effort that characterized the Marshall Plan Program.

Above all, we want to arouse in the younger generation that mutual trust which in those days exhorted the Europeans to make peace among themselves. They must not forget that the interdependence of States on both sides of the Atlantic proclaimed by John F. Kennedy must remain a moral, a cultural, an economic and a political reality. It must not be renounced, nor must it be weakened. It is part of the as yet unwritten constitution of the future Europe which we continue to strive for: with gratitude and respect for the man whose work we commemorate here today, the soldier who saw his life’s fulfillment in an act for peace. Twenty-five years ago he recruited us in the service of peace. In the spirit of his aims we shall endeavour to do our duty.

Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased that we have with us here today the Chairman of the Board of the German Marshall Fund of the United, Dean Harvey Brooks, as well as the Chairman of the Board of Overseers of Harvard University and Chairman of the Fund’s Honorary Committee, Mr. C. Douglas Dillon.

It is my honour and privilege to ask them to accept the deeds by which the German Government sets up the German Marshall Fund of the United States and the German Marshall Memorial Endowment of Harvard’s Program for West European Studies, together with the checks for the first of the fifteen annual installments.

THE FEDERAL REPUBLIC OF GERMANY Boston, June 5, 1972

THE CHANCELLOR

Dear Mr. President,

Let me thank you, also on behalf of the representatives of all parliamentary groups of the German Bundestag who accompany me on this visit, for your kind and warmhearted message of June 4, 1972.

This day on which, twenty-five years ago, Secretary of State George Marshall proclaimed the magnanimous initiative of this country for the recovery of a destroyed Europe almost without hope, is for us Europeans and above all for us Germans a day of grateful reminiscence. At the same time this day symbolizes the close partnership of Western Europe and North America within the Atlantic Alliance.

The spirit of jount responsibility which brought forth the Marshall Plan will also prove its value in our days and in the future in solving the problems with which the advanced industrial countries of Western Europe and North America are confronted.

Europeans and Americans can still learn a lot from each other. We must try to understand the individual characteristics of our people and nations. But above all we must learn to appreciate ‘what we have in common and what unites us.

The gesture of gratitude which I had the honor to announce at Harvard University, is intended to serve this purpose. The German Marshall Fund of the United States is meant to help keep awake and to strengthen in present and future generations the spirit of European-American solidarity and the awareness of our common destiny.

Sincerely,

Sgd.: Brandt

His Excellency

Richard M. Nixon

President of the United States of America