The Truman Doctrine

• The Truman Doctrine


  March 1947
• Truman Doctrine


  American intervention in Greece and Turkey marked a new era in the USA's attitude to world politics
• Under the Truman Doctrine


  The USA was prepared to send money, equipment and advice to any country which was, in the American view, threatened by a Communist takeover
• Truman accepted that eastern Europe was now Communist
• Containment


  Truman's aim was to stop Communism from spreading any further
• Views on containment


  • It must be made clear to the Soviet Union that expansion beyond a given limit would be met with military force
  • Containment should mean something firmer
• President Truman: 'I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures'
• Truman believed that Communism succeeded when people faced poverty and hardship
• The countries of Europe owed $11.5 billion to the USA
• There were extreme shortages of all goods, most countries were still rationing bread, and there was a coal shortage in the hard winter of 1947 that in Britain all electricity was turned off for a period each day
• Churchill described Europe as 'a rubble heap, a breeding ground of hate'
• Marshall suggested that about $17 billion of aid would be needed to rebuild Europe's prosperity
• Truman's policy was 'directed against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos'
• For a short time, the American Congress refused to grant the $17 billion for the Marshall Plan, as many Americans were becoming concerned by Truman's involvement in foreign affairs
• The Communists took over the government of Czechoslovakia in 1948


  American attitudes changed and Congress accepted the Marshall Plan and made $17 billion available over a period of four years
• The Marshall Plan was an extremely generous act by the American people, but was also motivated by American self-interest to create new markets for American goods and prevent another worldwide slump
• Stalin viewed the Marshall Plan with suspicion, refused to have anything more to do with it, and forbade any of the eastern European states to apply for Marshall Aid
• Stalin tightened his grip on the eastern European states by setting up COMECON and Cominform
• Stalin felt that the anti-Communist aims behind Marshall Aid would weaken his hold on eastern Europe and that the USA was trying to dominate as many states as possible by making them dependent on dollars
• Yugoslavia was the only Communist state to resist domination by Stalin