Paul Nitze Interview (page: 6 / 9) Presidential Medal of Freedom	Print Interview

After the war, you were very involved in the creation of the Marshall Plan. That began as a rather sketchy outline, didn't it?

Paul Nitze: That's correct. The idea was that something was needed to cure the economic difficulties of world trade, not just our economic situation.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. We were in pretty good economic shape, very good economic shape. The problem was that one country after another was going bankrupt because they were spending their gold and dollar reserves, and wanted to buy things from the United States. So we were running a persistent balance and payment surplus with the rest of the world of some $5 to $8 billion per year. And, you could see that over a few years, why the gold and dollar reserves of all the rest of the world would go down to close to zero and trade would stop. And therefore, something had to be done, and had to be done by us in order to limit this drain upon the rest of the world. And, I guess I was the first one to prepare a piece of paper arguing this point and saying we needed to have a plan which would pump something of the order of $5 billion per year into the world economy, over and above what it would earn through sales to the United States.

[ Key to Success ] Vision

Will Clayton took a serious interest in this piece of paper. In the meantime, George Kennan and the Policy Planning staff had been working on the same problem, but they were working on the economic recovery of Europe, and their theory was that if Europe were to recover, then the result would help all the rest of the world.

Those ideas were picked up by Mr. Acheson, and he gave a speech in Mississippi in which he laid them out fairly clearly. That Cleveland, Mississippi speech of Dean Acheson's was well received, but it required more political support. General Marshall had been scheduled, in any case, to give an address at Harvard commencement. So Chip Bohlen was directed to convert the ideas that had already been in Acheson's speech into a much more concise and pointed speech for General Marshall to give at Harvard. If you read the speech today, you will find that there are really only five paragraphs which go to the substance of the point. Chip did an outstanding job of drafting those five paragraphs. One of the points he made was that the program was directed not against any enemy, but was directed against destruction, disease, and despair in Europe. And that we would welcome any country that was prepared to join in, including the USSR. The plan was really to be developed by the Europeans themselves. If they would develop a plan of mutual self-help to make economic recovery in Europe work promptly, then we would survey what we could do in order to help, since our help was absolutely necessary.

That concept was the content of the speech that General Marshall gave at Harvard. The idea really got off the ground when it was picked up by Ernest Bevin in England and he put together what was called the CEEC, the Committee for European Economic Cooperation, with Sir Oliver Franks as Chairman. I worked very closely with Oliver Franks to see to it that there was coordination between what they were coming up with, and what we thought might be salable in the United States. The upshot was that we finally did get the thing translated from being just a concept, to being a plan which had been worked out by the Europeans, which we had gone over in detail, so we could really defend it before the Congress and get the authorizations and appropriations to make it work.

How bad was the economy in Europe at that time, and what did the Marshall Plan do to change that?

Paul Nitze: It was very bad indeed.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. The factories (in Europe) had pretty well closed down that could produce civilian goods. There not being enough civilian goods to attract -- so there wasn't enough for the farmers to buy things and sell their wheat and agriculture surplus and get supplies too. So the farmers ceased to make food available. Coal wasn't available. Coal wasn't adequately produced, and everything was grinding to a stop. Clearly the Communists thought that they were going to take over all of Europe as a result of the economic difficulties in Germany and France, Belgium, Holland and England as well. I went to a meeting of the World Federation of Trade Unions in London at that time, and the whole discussion was, "What European country would be the first to join the Communist ranks?" I think the vote was that it would be Italy, and that the second France, the third Germany, and that Britain wouldn't succumb to internal communism for maybe two years. But, the view was that the Communist takeover of Europe couldn't be delayed by anybody for more than two years from that time.

Because things were so desperate?

Paul Nitze: That's right, and getting worse, and the Communists were determined to see that things did get worse until they achieved political power.

So the idea of the Marshall Plan was to jump-start the western European economies.

Paul Nitze: That's right, but not make it directed against the Communists, which it wasn't. But then Mr. Stalin refused to have anything to do with it. The Czechs wanted to become participants in the Marshall Plan, but he refused to let them do that. It was that which created the division between East and Western Europe.

If you look at Eastern Europe today (1990), the state of the economy, the inability to provide goods and feed its people, some might compare Eastern Europe today to Western Europe sometime shortly after World War II.

Paul Nitze: That's correct. One thing though, that I think one tends to forget, is that the Communists were much better at it right after the war than they have been in the long run. For a long period of time, that command economy of theirs seemed to work quite well, and seemed to work better than we were doing in the west, certainly better than Europe was doing, where nothing seemed to work. It's only over the years that the deficiencies of the Communist way of doing things have become manifest.

Many of those things were very demanding not only of your time, but also in terms of energy and concentration. What did you do to keep fresh and creative? Did you have hobbies?

Get the Flash Player to see this video. Paul Nitze: I had a particular philosophy as to how to keep oneself healthy, and that was not to do regular exercise of any kind, but to beat your body up at least once every two months. Go off and shoot quail, ski hard, play five sets of tennis a day, or do some outrageous thing that got your body used to adjusting to violent change. It was my theory that this was a better way of maintaining your health than regular exercise. People who did regular exercise got into a rut, then some strange thing would happen and they would get a heart attack. I thought my method was much better. Doctors all disapproved of it, thought this was outrageous. But, I did follow that for many years.

Now I have decided that maybe the years have caught up with me, so I do need to do some daily exercise, which I do today. But I'm almost 84 now, so it's a different situation.

In those days you were going for the periodic purge.

Paul Nitze: And loved it.

That did seem to be a good strategy to prepare you for the unforeseen events of working in public service.

Paul Nitze: It did indeed.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. One time during the Marshall Plan days, when I had to defend the Marshall Plan appropriations before the House Appropriations Committee, I appeared for some, I think it was 38 consecutive sessions before John Taber, who was the chairman of that committee. During that course of those sessions, which were stretched over three or four months, I lost 15 pounds and was a mere wraith of my former self at the end of those hearings. We finally got it approved by the Committee, but that was a long and tedious and hard row to hoe.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

You were also very involved in the arms build-up that began after World War II, and for many years thereafter. You participated in a lot of the early studies. Looking back, was there anything the U.S. could have done differently, or were our actions largely dictated by the actions of others?

Paul Nitze: I find it hard, even looking back with hindsight, to see how we could have done things radically different, and more constructively.

Get the Flash Player to see this video. There are those who say that we grossly overestimated the dangers of a Soviet attack. We didn't really think there was going to be a Soviet attack. We knew the damage that they had suffered during World War II and that it was unlikely that they would wish to physically attack Europe. The question was really one of a longer range question. Weren't they really dedicated to the idea that the world as a whole needed to end up with one side or the other being victorious? This was certainly the essence of Marxist-Leninism that either they or we were going to win in the long run and they were dedicated to the proposition that the world should be a socialist, a Communist world. Now, were we right in estimating that that was their long range doctrine? I think everything we found since confirms that that was true. It wasn't a matter of immediate risk of war, it was what was the whole campaign aimed at. And, I don't think we got that wrong. So, I don't see how one could have had another option other than to maintain deterrence during that long period, and do what was necessary and in order to contain the Soviet Union and keep it from expanding further.

[ Key to Success ] Perseverance

They had been gaining by a continuing process of expansion. We had to contain them if we were going to bring about long-term change in the Soviet Union. Maybe we didn't do this as intelligently day by day as we could have, but I think the basic policy was right, and today it's demonstrable that it was right.

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