Frederick Jackson Turner's Frontier Thesis

Part 1; Basic Features of Post War Soviet Outlook, as Put Forward by Official Propaganda Machine, Are as Follows:
(a) USSR still lives in antagonistic "capitalist encirclement" with which in the long run there can be no permanent peaceful coexistence. As stated by Stalin in 1927 to a delegation of American workers:
"In course of further development of international revolution there will emerge two centers of world significance: a socialist center, drawing to itself the countries which tend toward socialism, and a capitalist center, drawing to itself the countries that incline toward capitalism. Battle between these two centers for command of world economy will decide fate of capitalism and of communism in entire world."
(c) Internal conflicts of capitalism inevitably generate wars. Wars thus generated may be of two kinds" intra-capitalist wars between two capitalist states, and war of intervention against socialist world. Smart capitalists, vainly seeking escape from inner conflicts of capitalism, incline toward latter.
(d) Intervention against USSR, while it would be disastrous to those who undertook it, would cause renewed delay in progress of Soviet socialism and must therefore be forestalled at all costs.
(e) Conflicts between capitalist states, though likewise fraught with danger for USSR, nevertheless hold out great possibilities for advancement of socialist cause, particularly if USSR remains militarily powerful, ideologically monolithic and faithful to its present brilliant leadership. . . .
So much for premises. To what deductions do they lead from standpoint of Soviet policy? TO following:
(a) Everything must be done to advance relative strength of USSR as factor in international society. Conversely, no opportunity must be missed to reduce strength and influence, collectively as well as individually, of capitalist powers.
(b) Soviet efforts, and those of Russia's friends abroad must be directed toward deepening and exploiting of differences and conflicts between capitalist powers. If these eventually deepen into an "imperialist" war, this war must be turned into revolutionary upheavals within the various capitalist countries. . . .
Part 2: Background of Outlook
Before examining ramifications of this party line in practice there are certain aspects of it to which I wish to draw attention. . . .
Second, please note that premises on which this party line is based are for the most part simply not true. . . .
Nevertheless, all these theses, however baseless and disproven, are being boldly put forward again today. What does this indicate? It indicates that Soviet party line is not based on any objective analysis of situation beyond Russia's borders; that it has, indeed, little to do with conditions outside of Russia; that it arises mainly from basic inner-Russian necessities which existed before recent war and exist today.
At bottom of Kremlin's neurotic view of world affairs is traditional and instinctive Russian sense of insecurity. . . .
It was no coincidence that Marxism, which had smoldered ineffectively for half a century in Western Europe, caught hold and blazed for first time in Russia. Only in this land which had never known a friendly neighbor or indeed any tolerant equilibrium of separate powers, either internal or international, could a doctrine thrive which viewed economic conflicts of society as insoluble by peaceful means. After establishment of Bolshevist regime, Marxist dogma, rendered even more truculent and intolerant by Lenin's interpretation, became a perfect vehicle for sense of insecurity with which Bolsheviks, even more than previous Russian rulers, were afflicted. In this dogma, with its basic altruism of purpose, they found justification for their instinctive fear of outside world, for the dictatorship without which they did not know how to rule, for cruelties they did not dare to inflict, for sacrifices they felt bound to demand. In the name of Marxism they sacrificed every single ethical value in their methods and tactics. Today they cannot dispense with it. It is fig leaf of their moral and intellectual respectability. Without it they would stand before history, at best, as only the last of that long succession of cruel and wasteful Russian rulers who have relentlessly forced country on to ever new heights of military power in order to guarantee external security of their internally weak regime. . . .
We have now seen nature and background of Soviet program. What may we expect by way of its practical implementation? . . .
(a) Internal policy devoted to increasing in every way strength and prestige of Soviet state: intensive military-industrialization; maximum development of armed forces; great displays to impress outsiders; continued secretiveness about internal matters, designed to conceal weaknesses and to keep opponents in dark.
(b) Wherever it is considered timely and promising, efforts will be made to advance official limits of Soviet power. For the moment, these efforts are restricted to certain neighboring points conceived of hereas being of immediate strategic necessity, such as Northern Iran, Turkey, possibly Bornholm. However, other points at any time come into question, if concealed Soviet political power is extended to new areas. Thus a "friendly" Persian Government might be asked to grant Russia a port on Persian Gulf. Should Spain fall under Communist control, question of Soviet base at Gibralter Strait might be activated. But such claims will appear on official level only when unofficial preparation is complete. . . .
(d) Toward colonial areas and backward or dependent peoples, Soviet policy, even on official plane, will be directed toward weakening of power and influence and contacts of advanced Western nations, on theory that in so far as this policy is successful, there will be created a vacuum which will favor Communist-Soviet penetration. Soviet pressure for participation in trusteeship arrangements thus represents, in my opinion, a desire to be in a position to complicate and inhibit exertion of Western influence at such points rather than to provide major channel for exerting of Soviet power. . . .
(e) Russians will strive energetically to develop Soviet representation in, and official ties with, countries in which they sense strong possibilities of opposition to Western centers of power. This applies to such widely separated points as Germany, Argentina, Middle Eastern countries, etc. . . .
Part 5: [Practical Deductions From Standpoints of US policy].
In summary, we have here a political force committed fanatically to the belief that with the US there can be no permanent modus vivendi, that it is desirable and necessary that the internal harmony of our society be disrupted, our traditional way of life be destroyed, the international authority of our state be broken, if Soviet power is to be secure. . . .
This is admittedly not a pleasant picture. Problem of how to cope with this force in [is] undoubtedly greatest task our diplomacy has ever faced and probably greatest it will ever have to face. It should be approached with same thoroughness and care as solution of major strategic problem in war, and if necessary, with no smaller outlay in planning effort. I cannot attempt to suggest all answers here. But I would like to record my conviction that problem is within our power to solve--and that without recourse to any general military conflict. And in support of this conviction there are certain observations of a more encouraging nature I should like to make:
(1) Soviet power, unlike that if Hitlerite Germany, is neither schematic nor adventuristic. It does not work by fixed plans. It does not take unnecessary risks. Impervious to logic of reason, and it is highly sensitive to logic of force. For this reason it can easily withdraw--and usually does--when strong resistance is encountered at any point. Thus, if the adversary has sufficient force and makes clear his readiness to use it, he rarely has to do so. If situations are properly handled there need be no prestige-engaging showdowns.
(2) Gauged against Western World as a whole, Soviets are still by far the weaker force. Thus, their success will really depend on degree of cohesion, firmness, and vigor which Western World can muster. And this is factor which it is within our power to influence. . . .
For these reasons I think we may approach calmly and with good heart problem of how to deal with Russia. As to how this approach should be made, I only wish to advance, by way of conclusion, following comments:
(1) Our first step must be to apprehend and recognize for what it is, the nature of the movement with which we are dealing. We must study it with same courage, detachment, objectivity, and same determination not to be emotionally provoked or unseated by it, with which doctor studies unruly and unreasonable individual.
(2) We must see that our public is educated to realities of Russian situation. I cannot over-emphasize importance of this. Press cannot do this alone. It must be done mainly by government, which is necessarily more experienced and better informed of practical problems involved. In this we need not be deterred by [ugliness] of picture. I am convinced that there would be far less hysterical anti-Sovietism in our country today if realities of this situation were better understood by our people. . . .
(3) Much depends on health and vigor of our society. World communism is like malignant parasite which feeds only on diseased tissue. This is point at which domestic and foreign policies meet. Every courageous and incisive measure to solve internal problems of our own society, to improve self-confidence, discipline, morale, and community spirit of our own people, is a diplomatic victory over Moscow worth a thousand diplomatic notes and joint communiqués. If we cannot abandon fatalism and indifference in face of deficiencies of our own society, Moscow will profit--Moscow cannot help profiting by them in its foreign policies.

The Marshall Plan (1947)
On June 5, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall spoke at Harvard University and outlined what would become known as the Marshall Plan. Europe, still devastated by the war, had just survived one of the worst winters on record. The nations of Europe had nothing to sell for hard currency, and the democratic socialist governments in most countries were unwilling to adopt the draconian proposals for recovery advocated by old-line classical economists. Something had to be done, both for humanitarian reasons and also to stop the potential spread of communism westward.
The United States offered up to $20 billion for relief, but only if the European nations could get together and draw up a rational plan on how they would use the aid. For the first time, they would have to act as a single economic unit; they would have to cooperate with each other. Marshall also offered aid to the Soviet Union and its allies in eastern Europe, but Stalin denounced the program as a trick and refused to participate. The Russian rejection probably made passage of the measure through Congress possible.
The Marshall Plan, it should be noted, benefited the American economy as well. The money would be used to buy goods from the United States, and they had to be shipped across the Atlantic on American merchant vessels. But it worked. By 1953 the United States had pumped in $13 billion, and Europe was standing on its feet again. Moreover, the Plan included West Germany, which was thus reintegrated into the European community. (The aid was all economic; it did not include military aid until after the Korean War.)
Aside from helping to put Europe back on its feet, the Marshall Plan led to the Schuman Plan, which in turn led to Euratom, then the Coal and Iron Community and the Common Market, and pointed to what may yet evolve into an economically and politically united Europe. In many ways, the Marshall Plan satisfied both those who wanted our foreign policy to be generous and idealistic and those who demanded realpolitik; it helped feed the starving and shelter the homeless, and at the same time stopped the spread of communism and put the European economy back on its feet.
For further reading: John Gimbel, The Origins of the Marshall Plan (1976); Imanuel Wexler, The Marshall Plan Revisited (1983); Michael Hogan, The Marshall Plan (1987).
A Summary of the Marshall Plan
Even now a model for positive economic diplomacy, the Marshall Plan was a rational effort by the United States aimed at reducing the hunger, homelessness, sickness, unemployment, and political restlessness of the 270 million people in sixteen nations in West Europe. Marshall Plan funds were not mainly directed toward feeding individuals or building individual houses, schools, or factories, but at strengthening the economic superstructure (particularly the iron-steel and power industries). The program cost the American taxpayers $11,820,700,000 (plus $1,505,100,000 in loans that were repaid) over four years and worked because it was aimed at aiding a well-educated, industrialized people temporarily down but not out. The Marshall Plan significantly magnified their own efforts and reduced the suffering and time West Europe took to recover from the war. The program--whose official title was "European Recovery Program"--aimed at: (1) increasing production; (2) expanding European foreign trade; (3) facilitating European economic cooperation and integration; and (4) controlling inflation, which was the program's chief failure.
The idea of massive U.S. loans to individual countries had already been tried (nearly $20 billion--mainly long-term, low interest loans--since the war’s end) and had failed to make significant headway against Europe's social and economic problems. The plan that Marshall enunciated at Harvard University on June 5, 1947, was revolutionary in that it required the recipients to organize to produce a rational, multilateral approach to their common economic problems. Another innovative feature was its limited duration: four years maximum, thereby assuring American taxpayers and their representatives that the program would not be an indefinite commitment.
The economic problems in 1947-48 included not only the lack of capital to invest, but also the need for Europeans to overcome a U.S. trade surplus with them so massive as to imperil further trade and to encourage unmanageable inflation. Marshall Plan money helped stimulate the revival of European trade with the world and increased trade among European countries.
Americans were reluctant to invest in Europe because their profits were available only in local currencies that were little desired by U.S. businesses and investors. The Marshall Plan guaranteed that these investors would be able to convert their profits earned in European currencies into U.S. dollars. Grants and loans in U.S. dollars enabled managers in Europe to purchase in America specialty tools for their new industries. Marshall Plan money also paid for industrial technicians and farmers to visit U.S. industries and farms to study American techniques. Plan funds even paid the postage on privately contributed relief packages.
Many people in Washington helped to implement and manage the European Recovery Program that Marshall first outlined at Harvard; this is why, in addition to his normal modesty, Marshall refused to call the idea the "Marshall Plan." He always believed that his greatest contribution to the program was his 1947-48 nationwide campaign to convince the American people--and through them the Congress--of the its necessity; he likened his efforts in scope and intensity to a campaign for the presidency.
Over its four-year life, the Marshall Plan cost the U.S. 2.5 to 5 times the percent of national income as current foreign aid programs. One would need to multiply the program's $13.3 billion cost by 10 or perhaps even 20 times to have the same impact on the U.S. economy now as the Marshall Plan had between 1948 and 1952. (Most of the money was spend between 1948 and the beginning of the Korean War (June 25, 1950); after June 30, 1951, the remaining aid was folded into the Mutual Defense Assistance Program.)
On December 10, 1953, George C. Marshall received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo, Norway. He accepted it, not as his individual triumph, but as the representative of the American people, whose efforts and money had made the program a success.

The Harvard Speech:
Secretary of State Marshall walks in the academic procession before receiving an honorary degree from Harvard University and delivering his brief Marshall Plan speech, June 5, 1947.
Secretary of State Marshall at Harvard University
By the end of May, State Department planning was beginning to jell; all Marshall’s advisers were by now agreed that the United States had to launch a massive aid program. They were all too aware of the U.S.’s too-little-too-late response to West Europe’s economic crisis of 1929-31 and that it had contributed to the rise of Adolph Hitler. On May 30, Marshall directed his staff to prepare a draft for a ten-minute talk. To avoid comparisons of the new approach with the controversial Truman Doctrine, Marshall agreed with Acheson’s suggestion that he present the aid issue as a material or technological rather than an ideological problem, and to propose no American-inspired solution.
Marshall’s advisers were generally agreed on two other points: first, European nations had to take the initiative and to coordinate policies; second, the offer was made to all European states in order to avoid the implication that the United States sought to divide Europe into American and Soviet blocs. Nevertheless, it was assumed that the Soviets would never accept economic conditions such as openness, free trade, and American supervision.
The Marshall Plan speech was deliberately low-key and no master plan was enunciated; the speech had just the right degree of vagueness to require European action, yet the right degree of specificity to excite it. In time, the Marshall Plan program that evolved from the planning of the first half of 1947 would be adjudged one of the greatest of America’s foreign policy successes. Harry Truman considered the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan "two halves of the same walnut," although Marshall did not.
Charles Bohlen wrote a draft of the talk for Marshall based upon a study by George F. Kennan and his Policy Planning Staff and Will Clayton’s memorandum on the seriousness of Europe’s economic plight. Marshall then modified the draft, contributing the insistence that the program come from Europe and be open to all European states willing to abide by the rules. To prevent leaks, neither President Truman nor Marshall’s State Department advisers knew the content of the final version of the speech until after it was delivered, although the text was available to newsmen at the State Department on June 4. Acheson, Kennan, and others dropped pointed hints to various influential British opinion-makers in Washington that Marshall was going to make a statement on foreign aid.

Text of the Marshall Plan Speech

(State Department handout version of 4 June 1947.)

(The speech was not given at the formal June 5 morning commencement exercise but after lunch when the twelve honorary degree recipients made speeches to the graduates, friends, and alumni. The speech was tape-recorded and is available from the Marshall Museum Shop.)

I need not tell you gentlemen that the world situation is very serious. That must be apparent to all intelligent people. I think one difficulty is that the problem is one of such enormous complexity that the very mass of facts presented to the public by press and radio make it exceedingly difficult for the man in the street to reach a clear appraisement of the situation. Furthermore, the people of this country are distant from the troubled areas of the earth and it is hard for them to comprehend the plight and consequent reactions of the long-suffering peoples, and the effect of those reactions on their governments in connection with our efforts to promote peace in the world.
In considering the requirements for the rehabilitation of Europe the physical loss of life, the visible destruction of cities, factories, mines and railroads was correctly estimated, but it has become obvious during recent months that this visible destruction was probably less serious than the dislocation of the entire fabric of European economy. For the past ten years conditions have been highly abnormal. The feverish preparation for war and the more feverish maintenance of the war effort engulfed all aspects of national economies. Machinery has fallen into disrepair or is entirely obsolete. Under the arbitrary and destructive Nazi rule, virtually every possible enterprise was geared into the German war machine. Long-standing commercial ties, private institutions, banks, insurance companies and shipping companies disappeared, through loss of capital, absorption through nationalization or by simple destruction. In many countries, confidence in the local currency has been severely shaken. The breakdown of the business structure of Europe during the war was complete. Recovery has been seriously retarded by the fact that two years after the close of hostilities a peace settlement with Germany and Austria has not been agreed upon. But even given a more prompt solution of these difficult problems, the rehabilitation of the economic structure of Europe quite evidently will require a much longer time and greater effort than had been foreseen.
There is a phase of this matter which is both interesting and serious. The farmer has always produced the foodstuffs to exchange with the city dweller for the other necessities of life. This division of labor is the basis of modern civilization. At the present time it is threatened with breakdown. The town and city industries are not producing adequate goods to exchange with the food-producing farmer. Raw materials and fuel are in short supply. Machinery is lacking or word out. The farmer of the peasant cannot find the goods for sale which he desires to purchase. So the sale of his farm produce for money which he cannot use seems to him an unprofitable transaction. He, therefore, has withdrawn many fields from crop cultivation and is using them for grazing. He feeds more grain to stock and finds for himself and his family an ample supply of food, however short he may be on clothing and the other ordinary gadgets of civilization. Meanwhile people in the cities are short of food and fuel. So the governments are forced to use their foreign money and credits to procure these necessities abroad. This process exhausts funds which are urgently needed for reconstruction. This a very serious situation is rapidly developing which bodes no good for the world. The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.
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. The manufacturer and the farmer throughout wide areas must be able and willing to exchange their products for currencies the continuing value of which is not open to question.
Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all. It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health in the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace. Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos. Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist. Such assistance, I am convinced, must not be on a peace-meal basis as various crises develop. Any assistance that this Government may render in the future should provide a cure rather than a mere palliative. Any government that is willing to assist in the task of recovery will find full cooperation, I am sure, on the part of the United States Government. Any government which maneuvers to block the recovery of other countries cannot expect help from us. Furthermore, governments, political parties or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.
It is already evident that, before the United States Government can proceed much further in its efforts to alleviate the situation and help start the European world on its way to recovery, there must be some agreement among the countries of Europe as to the requirements of the situation and the part those countries themselves will take in order to give proper effect to whatever action might be undertaken by this Government. It would be neither fitting nor efficacious for this Government to undertake to draw up unilaterally a program designed to place Europe on its feet economically. This is the business of the Europeans. The initiative, I think, must come from Europe. The role of this country should consist of friendly aid in the drafting of a European program and of later support of such a program so far as it may be practical for us to do so. The program should be a joint one, agreed to by a number, if not all European nations.
An essential part of any successful action on the part of the United States is an understanding on the part of the people of America of the character of the problem and the remedies to be applied. Political passion and prejudice should have no part. With foresight, and a willingness on the part of our people to face up to the vast responsibility which history has clearly placed upon our country, the difficulties I have outlined can and will be overcome.