The Visionaries

From the pre-eminent historian of WWII, an impassioned appreciation of the unprecedented postwar decision by the United States to aid its enemies as well as its allies via the Marshall Plan, leading to eight decades of peace and shared prosperity, which are being upended in today’s political environment. On March 12, 1947, less than two years after the end of WWII, President Harry S. Truman gave what proved to be a seminal speech before Congress, in response to a European crisis: Greece was facing economic collapse and Britain, long the country’s guarantor against encroaching Soviet ambition, was bankrupt after six years of war. Truman felt the U.S. had to support a free people resisting attempted subjugation through financial aid which, he emphasized, “is essential to economic stability and orderly political processes.” The U.S. economy had thrived and the country was the richest nation in the world. But Truman envisioned that shared prosperity among the democracies would make them politically more stable and long-term peace much more likely. His momentous proposition that the U.S. bail out Greece led in turn to the unprecedented and radical Marshall Plan itself: the decision to aid not only U.S. allies but—for the first time in history--its former enemies as they all rebuilt from the ruins of the calamitous war. Indeed, with this aid Germany and Japan became economic powerhouses and, with most of Europe, staunch allies of the U.S.—and almost eighty years on the benefits of this extraordinary decision are still being felt, albeit threatened in our current political environment. James Holland’s deep knowledge of WWII gives him unique insight and appreciation for its historic aftermath. In tight and vivid prose, Visions of Peace chronicles the prelude to the Marshall Plan—from FDR’s “four freedoms” speech and “Good Neighbor Policy” towards Central and South America to the historic Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944, which established the International Monetary Fund and World Bank. But it was Truman who pushed for the Marshall Plan, which in 1948 kickstarted the fastest period of growth in European history, its low tariff environment encouraging trade and the resultant prosperity and longstanding peace throughout most of Europe and the Americas. However, Holland warns that we in the West have become complacent, less willing to safeguard the freedoms that extended prosperity has allowed; and he makes clear the remarkably far-sighted decisions made in the wake of WWII stand in stark contrast to our transactional approach to the world today.