Remaking France

Americanization, Public Diplomacy, and the Marshall Plan

Brian A. McKenzie

• Publisher: Berghahn Books
• Year: 2005
• ISBN:
  9780857455611
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: French History
• Index: History

Public diplomacy, neglected following the end of the Cold War, is once again a central tool of American foreign policy. This book, examining as it does the Marshall Plan as the form of public diplomacy of the United States in France after World War Two, offers a timely historical case study. Current debates about globalization and a possible revival of the Marshall Plan resemble the debates about Americanization that occurred in France over fifty years ago. Relations between France and the United States are often tense despite their shared history and cultural ties, reflecting the general fear and disgust and attraction of America and Americanization. The period covered in this book offers a good example: the French Government begrudgingly accepted American hegemony even though anti-Americanism was widespread among the French population, which American public diplomacy tried to overcome with various cultural and economic activities examined by the author. In many cases French society proved resistant to Americanization, and it is questionable whether public diplomacy actually accomplished what its advocates had promised. Nevertheless, by the 1950s the United States had established a strong cultural presence in France that included Hollywood, Reader's Digest, and American-style hotels.

Chapter 1

FRANCE, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE DEVELOPMENT OF U.S. PUBLIC DIPLOMACY

Secretary of State George C. Marshall launched what would become the Marshall Plan at Harvard University on 5 June 1947. In a moving speech he called for a program to aid European reconstruction. A year later Congress passed the Economic Cooperation Act, which created the European Recovery Program (ERP), and an administrative organization, the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA). The immediate goals outlined by Marshall were to provide relief— food and fuel—to Europeans and to aid in the reconstruction of their economies.

Yet the Secretary of State’s call for reconstruction included an important cultural component. Years of war and hardship, Marshall argued, had caused Europe to lose confidence in its future. The crisis in Europe was a threat to “modern civilization” because it invariably led, in Marshall’s words, to “disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned.”¹ The program to aid European reconstruction, therefore, needed to address not only economic matters, but also the social and political threats to European stability. Marshall asserted:

The truth of the matter is that Europe’s requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products—principally from America—are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political deterioration of a very grave character. The remedy lies in breaking the vicious circle and restoring the confidence of the European people in the economic future of their own countries and of Europe as a whole.

Convinced of the link between the deterioration of socioeconomic conditions and the increase in support for national Communist parties (the French Communist Party was already the largest party in France), U.S. officials sought to create conditions conducive to the growth of a free market economy and democracy. “At the most basic level,” explains Charles S. Maier, “the Marshall Plan embodied a belief that economic assistance could help prevent Communist political advance in Europe.”²

Eighteen states, every European country outside of the Soviet bloc except Spain, participated in the Marshall Plan, including neutral nations such as Sweden and Ireland. After the initial “offer” by the United States, leaders from the Soviet Union, Britain, and France met in Paris during June 1947 to consider the proposal. The Soviets, however, did not stay long. Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov concluded that the Marshall Plan was an attempt to relieve a crisis in the capitalist mode of production and an attempt by the United States to alter the postwar status quo. It was not clear, in any case, that western European leaders were eager to have Soviet participation.³ The offer demanded a high level of cooperation among participating nations and a willingness to involve the U.S. in national economic planning. These were conditions that were difficult for some U.S. allies to accept, and there was never any question that the Soviet Union would participate in the Marshall Plan, or that the U.S. Congress would fund it with Soviet participation. The countries that decided to participate formed the Organization for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC) to coordinate and distribute Marshall Plan aid among participating countries. From 1948 to 1951 U.S. funding for the Marshall Plan amounted to $12.5 billion, roughly 3 percent of its gross domestic product for this period. American officials hoped the Marshall Plan would strengthen ties with its European allies and insure their strategic political and economic value.

In this sense, the Marshall Plan was a continuation of immediate postwar programs for U.S. allies.⁴ France, because of its importance, illustrates this development of U.S. aid from the immediate postwar to the Marshall Plan. As early as 1945 American leaders began providing economic assistance to the French government. This aid preserved the solvency of the French government and provided emergency funds for food and fuel purchases. Of the $920 million in foreign aid that the United States earmarked for Europe in September, 1945, France received $550 million.⁵ This increased to $650 million for 1946 and early 1947.⁶ The U.S. doubted that France could even purchase staples. For the fourth quarter of 1947 and the first quarter of 1948 the United States estimated that France would need to import the equivalent of $190 million worth of coal, $172 million in grain, and $32 million in fats and oils, but France would collect only $380 million in receipts.⁷ Bread rations declined from 300g to 200g over the course of 1946 to 1947, and Americans put the average daily caloric consumption of the French at about twenty-one hundred.⁸ Given these circumstances, France could not be expected to contribute financially to the occupation of Germany, or to meet other commitments, including foreign debt payments. French officials shared a similar assessment of their country’s plight. A 1948 report described U.S. aid as “indispensable.”⁹ It had prevented widespread food shortages and “grave political and social consequences.”¹⁰

Was France’s situation that much worse than that of other European countries? Not necessarily. Visiting Washington, D.C., in August 1945, Charles de Gaulle told Truman that French coal production had reached two-thirds of its prewar level.¹¹ American officials estimated that food was more available in France than Italy in 1947.¹² The U.S. recognized that other countries had pressing economic needs, but officials targeted aid to Western European countries where they feared a Communist takeover. In the eyes of American officials, a strong Communist party and material deprivation created an unstable political environment. The State Department policy statement on France explained: “Today, though at peace, France is the scene of an internal political battle, the outcome of which is of the greatest importance to the United States. The world drama of Russian expansion is being played in miniature on the stage of France.”¹³ To make matters worse, in the eyes of American officials, the extreme right was also a threat. Summarizing the situation in 1947 a State Department memorandum explained, “In France there is a possibility that the forces of the extreme right, grouped around General de Gaulle, might temporarily seize power. But is difficult to imagine this taking place without civil war.”¹⁴ American aid was seen as essential to preserve the political stability of France.

Indeed, the French Communist Party (PCF) was strong. It received 28.8 percent of the vote in the November 1946 elections for the new National Assembly.¹⁵ The Communist François Billoux was the Minister of Defense, and the PCF held three additional portfolios. For American politicians the strength of Communism was a symptom of European weakness, not necessarily the cause. Western Europe had been in decline since the First World War, according to American officials, and it was now in need of spiritual and cultural renewal. In the eyes of Republican Senator A.H. Vandenberg a “corroding gloom” that threatened “Western Civilization” pervaded Europe.¹⁶ The Marshall Plan offered Europe the United States as a social, cultural, and economic model to be emulated. From labor relations to chicken farming, the Marshall Plan exported American ideas and “know-how” as the cure to Europe’s ills. Above all, American support could provide the hope needed by depressed Europeans. The more Americanized Europe could become, the better off it would be. It was this premise that enabled an American official to argue that counterpart funds spent on backstops and dugouts as well as steel mills were wise investments.

Political developments increased France’s importance to the U.S. In May 1947, the prime minister Paul Ramadier dismissed Communist ministers from his cabinet. Then, in October, the PCF began a policy of government opposition. In the United States there was widespread agreement in official circles that if France was “lost” to Communism the rest of continental Europe would follow. According to Robert Lovett, the acting secretary of state in 1948, France was the “keystone of continental Western Europe.”¹⁷ Thus, when the final appropriations were made France received the largest portion of continental aid from the Marshall Plan, just over $2.9 billion.¹⁸

As was the case with American economic assistance, U.S. public diplomacy in France preceded the Marshall Plan. Initial postwar public diplomacy was, in fact, a continuance of wartime public diplomacy. A key issue from 1944 to 1967 (with a brief interlude) was the relationship between French civilians and the U.S. military. American soldiers are just now being recognized by scholars as important vectors for Americanization.¹⁹ Olivier Pottier’s Les bases américaines en France (1950-1967) offers the first complete study of American troops in France during the Cold War.²⁰ Pottier demonstrates that efforts to limit contact between GIs and the local populace were successful, but that ironically this did not constrain the Americanization of the locales where the troops were stationed.

A July 1945 military study of the attitudes of GIs revealed the need for a dedicated public diplomacy program. Just over a year after D-Day U.S. military officials concluded that American soldiers had an overwhelmingly negative opinion of France: “If strong measures are not put in effect during the next eight or ten months,” the report explained, “the vast majority of U.S. soldiers will come home with stories of a corrupt, shiftless, unfriendly France.”²¹ According to the U.S. military, American GIs viewed the French less favorably than the Russians, English, and even the Germans.²² U.S. authorities called for “an all-out campaign” in cooperation with the French to alter the opinion of the GIs before they returned home. “France’s part, in this campaign, can be as important as she wants it to be.”²³

French officials responded to the American proposal with alacrity. Plans were quickly worked out with the U.S. military to show two short films to American GIs. French officials expected to reach thirteen million soldiers this way.²⁴ For French officials, this was an unprecedented opportunity to influence American opinion in favor of France.²⁵ In June 1945 the French provisional government had created the Comité français de bienvenue aux allies (COFBA).²⁶ In cooperation with American authorities COFBA pursued a number of programs. It organized visits to ski resorts in the Alps for GIs on leave. It also offered courses in cooperation with American universities to over five thousand Americans in France. Armed Forces Network featured French music programs. American film students worked with COFBA to produce the short documen...