47.02.27A
(1824w)
STATEMENT TO CONGRESSIONAL LEADERS1
February 27, 1947
Top Secret
[Washington, DC]
A crisis of the utmost importance and urgency has
arisen in Greece and to some extent in Turkey. This crisis
has a direct and immediate relation to the security of the
United States.
For the past ten days our representatives in Greece,
Ambassador MacVeagh, Mr. Ethridge and Mr. Porter,2 have been
warning us that economic collapse is imminent, that the
morale of the Greek Army, already low, will be deeply
shaken and that the integrity and independence of the
country itself is threatened. What the Greek Government
needs urgently are funds to meet the needs of the military
and civilian population in foreign purchases and certain
amounts of light military equipment in order to suppress
the bandit groups which, under Communist leadership, are
threatening the Government and the tranquility of the
country.
Hitherto the British Government has been meeting the
foreign currency needs of the Greeks and has been giving
them such military items as they have. It is now clear that
the grave difficulties into which the British are plunged
will not make this help possible for many weeks more. It is
estimated that for the remainder of the year the needs of
the Greek Government may amount to $250,000,000. It is
altogether possible, and indeed probable, that there will
be further needs next year. In addition to financial help
it is essential that the Greeks be given assistance in the
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expenditure of these funds in the reconstruction of the
essential services in the country such as railroads, harbor
facilities, bridges, highways, et cetera, and in the
reorganization of the civil service which has been
shattered by the occupation and the inflation.
Our interest in Greece is by no means restricted to
humanitarian or friendly impulses. If Greece should
dissolve into civil war it is altogether probable that it
would emerge as a communist state under Soviet control.
Turkey would be surrounded and the Turkish situation, to
which I shall refer in a moment, would in turn become still
more critical. Soviet domination might thus extend over the
entire Middle East to the borders of India. The effect of
this upon Hungary, Austria, Italy and France cannot be
overestimated. It is not alarmist to say that we are faced
with the first crisis of a series which might extend Soviet
domination to Europe, the Middle East and Asia.
There is no power other than the United States which
can act to avert this crisis. The British, as the recent
coal crisis has demonstrated, are in extreme economic
distress.3 They are liquidating their positions in Burma,
India, Palestine and Egypt. There is no reasonable basis
for doubting that the same considerations are operating to
terminate their expenditures in Greece and Turkey.
We can give you no assurance that American assistance
to Greece will unquestionably save the situation but it is
plainly evident that that situation cannot be saved without
American assistance. The choice is between acting with
energy or losing by default.
The problem in Turkey is slightly different. The
Russians, by conducting a war of nerves, have kept the
entire Turkish Army mobilized with the resulting drain upon
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the economy of that country which it cannot long support
under its present antiquated economic structure. It needs
two things, financial assistance to increase its
productiveness and some help to the end that its military
forces may be rendered equally effective with fewer men.
Here again only the United States can render effective help
in view of the situation of Great Britain. Our military
authorities are united in the view that the maintenance of
the integrity of Turkey is essential to the entire
independent structure of the eastern Mediterranean and the
Middle East.
Improved relations and better understanding with the
Soviet Union will be much more difficult of achievement if
we allow the situation in Greece and Turkey to deteriorate.
As you see from what I have said the present situation
is not one which permits of delay or inaction. We are at
the point of decision. We cannot enter upon the first steps
of policy without the assurance and determination to carry
it through. To do this requires the support of the Congress
and certain legislation. I hope this legislation may be
obtained with bi-partisan support and without protracted
controversy. Internal division and delay might gravely
imperil the success of the program we are proposing.
I do not wish to minimize the importance of the
decision which has to be made. What the Administration
seeks at the present time is as follows:
1. Your support for a statement by me to the Greek and
British Governments that the United States Government is prepared
to render substantial financial assistance to the Greek
government (as I said before, this may reach $250,000,000 in the
present year) and to transfer such light military equipment as is
necessary to restore order and the authority of the Government.
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We shall, of course, require assurances from both the Greek and
British Governments that they will act to the full extent of
their capacities to achieve the result which we are seeking. We
shall also insist that there is full American supervision of the
expenditure of such assistance as we may give.
2. Such emergency legislation, probably in the form of an
authorization to the Export-Import Bank, to make funds available
without hampering restrictions. This may have to be followed with
other legislation after we have received the report of the
economic mission now in Greece.
3. Support for similar action in the case of Turkey as a
result of more mature examination of that situation.
4. Your support, should the legislation be necessary, for
such amendments to existing law as are necessary to permit the
transfer of essential military equipment referred to above.4
NA/RG 59 (Central Decimal File, 868.00/2-2747)
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1. Marshall sent this memorandum to President Truman
with a cover memorandum stating that it represented "the
substance of the remarks I made this morning to the group
in your office." (Marshall Memorandum for the President,
February 27, 1947, NA/RG 59 [Central Decimal File,
868.00/2-2747.) On the previous morning at 10:30 a.m.
Marshall had met with Secretary of War Robert Patterson and
Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal along with their
assistants, and at 3:00
PM
he had delivered to Truman a
memorandum written by Executive Secretary John F. Gange
summarizing their conclusions: that the British were
“sincere” in stating they could not continue to aid Greece;
that the situation in that country was “desperate;” that
Greek collapse “would create a situation threatening to the
security of the United States;” and that “we should take
immediate steps to extend all possible aid to Greece and,
on a lesser scale, to Turkey.” An attached paper then set
forth the specific measures recommended by the three
secretaries. (Gange to Marshall, February 26, 1947,
“Memorandum for the President on Aid to Greece and Turkey,”
GCMRL/G. C. Marshall Collection [Truman]. The memorandum
and attached paper are in Foreign Relations, 1947, 5: 58–
60; see 56-57 for an edited version of the morning
meeting.)
Truman noted in his memoirs that he had held a meeting
in the White House on February 27 beginning at 10:00 a.m.
Present, in addition to himself and Marshall, were Senators
Styles Bridges (Republican from New Hampshire, chairman of
the Appropriations Committee), Arthur Vandenberg
(Republican from Michigan, chairman of the Foreign
Relations Committee), Alben W. Barkley (Democrat from
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Kentucky, a minority member of both the Finance and Foreign
Relations committees), Tom Connally (Democrat from Texas
and ranking minority member on the Foreign Relations
Committee), and House of Representatives members Joseph W.
Martin Jr. (Republican from Massachusetts and Speaker of
the House), Charles A. Eaton (Republican from New Jersey
and chairman of the Foreign Affairs Committee), Sol Bloom
(Democrat from New York and ranking minority member of the
Foreign Affairs Committee), and Sam Rayburn (Democrat from
Texas and minority leader). John Taber, a Republican member
of the House from New York and chairman of the
Appropriations Committee, was unable to attend; he called
on the president later that day. "I told the group that I
had decided to extend aid to Greece and Turkey," Truman
noted, "and that I hoped Congress would provide the means
to make this aid timely and sufficient." Marshall's
presentation followed. (Truman, Memoirs, 2: 103.)
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2. Lincoln MacVeagh had been US ambassador to the
Greek government since December 1943. Newspaper publisher
(Louisville Times) Mark F. Ethridge, who had reported to
former Secretary James F. Byrnes on Balkan conditions
(1945–47), was the US representative on the UN Security
Council's Commission of Investigation, which had been
established on December 19, 1946, to ascertain the facts
concerning alleged violations of Greece's borders by
insurgent forces said to be using the territories of
Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia as operational bases.
Paul A. Porter had been in Athens since mid-January 1947 as
chief of the new American Economic Mission to Greece.
3. A strike by coal miners in the United States
curtailed exports, considerably aggravating existing
shortages in Europe. Great Britain had been plagued by
unusually cold weather since December 1946. On February 7,
1947, the British government announced that power would be
cut off to many industrial customers and power for domestic
consumers would cease between nine o'clock and noon and two
to four in the afternoon. (Foreign Relations, 1947, 3: 487–
88.)
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4. "I knew we were met at Armageddon," wrote Dean
Acheson, who also attended the White House meeting; he
noted in his memoirs that the response to Marshall's
presentation had been poor. "My distinguished chief, most
unusually and unhappily, flubbed his opening statement. In
desperation I whispered to him a request to speak.... Both
my superiors, equally perturbed, gave me the floor. Never
have I spoken under such a pressing sense that the issue
was up to me alone. No time was left for measured
appraisal. In the past eighteen months, I said, Soviet
pressure on the Straits, on Iran, and on northern Greece
had brought the Balkans to the point where a highly
possible Soviet breakthrough might open three continents to
Soviet penetration. Like apples in a barrel infected by one
rotten one, the corruption of Greece would infect Iran and
all to the east. It would also carry infection to Africa
through Asia Minor and Egypt, and to Europe through Italy
and France, already threatened by the strongest domestic
Communist parties in Western Europe. The Soviet Union was
playing one of the greatest gambles in history at minimal
cost. It did not need to win all the possibilities. Even
one or two offered immense gains. We and we alone were in a
position to break up the plan. These were the stakes that
British withdrawal from the eastern Mediterranean offered
to an eager and ruthless opponent." (Acheson, Creation, p.
219. Joseph Jones gives a more detailed explication of
Acheson's remarks in Fifteen Weeks, pp. 139–42.)
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