The Visionaries: Bretton Woods, the Marshall Plan, and the Making of the Post-World War II Order

On March 12, 1947, less than two years after the end of World War II, President Harry S. Truman gave a seminal speech before Congress, in response to a European crisis: Greece was facing economic collapse and encroaching Soviet ambition, and Truman felt the U.S. had to give financial aid to a free people resisting attempted subjugation, which, he emphasized, would promote “economic stability and orderly political processes.”

The U.S. was the richest nation in the world, but Truman believed 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—our 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.

James Holland’s deep knowledge of WWII gives him unique insight and appreciation for its historic aftermath. In tight and vivid prose, The Visionaries chronicles the prelude to the Marshall Plan—from Franklin Roosevelt’s historic “four freedoms” speech and “Good Neighbor Policy” towards Central and South America to the landmark Bretton Woods Conference of July 1944, which established the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, pillars of world stability. But it was Truman who pushed for the Marshall Plan, which in 1948 kickstarted via economic assistance the fastest period of growth in European history. Its low-tariff environment encouraged trade and brought prosperity and longstanding peace throughout most of Europe and the Americas, including in the United States. 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.