First, please bear with me for some personal reminiscences, as they are relevant to my review of this book. As a child growing up in Italy after the war, I recall my parents (who typically held somewhat different political views) both agreeing on one issue: their gratitude for America's role in rebuilding Europe, and especially Italy, after liberating us from fascism in 1945. My mother was very fond of America for bringing us Jazz and great movies, which opened for her a culture and way of life that she, as a young woman, found incredibly open and attractive. My father joined the partisan in 1944 at 17 and carried night missions against the German occupying forces: when the Americans liberated our town in April 1945 he was more impressed with the unbelievable amount of war materials, vehicles and supplies (including seemingly inexhaustible amounts of chocolate, Lucky Strike cigarettes and nylon women stockings that the American troops were tossing around to the population) and especially the carefree, happy-go-lucky attitude of the troops, so starkly different from the rigid, tight lipped discipline of the Germans. But both of my parents kept praising the Marshall Plan, which they described as an extraordinarily generous gift to us that literally made it possible for Italy to rebuild and expand its war-torn economy and ended the famine of the first two post-war years. My grandfather, whose small metal fabricating business had been destroyed by the allied bombs, also waxed lyrical about the Marshall Plan, as it enabled him to rebuild and restart his business.
So, when I came across a review of this book, the title rang a bell and, despite some doubts that it might prove overly technical and rather dull reading, I bought it. To my surprise, it proved well written, easy to read despite the complex topic, and remarkably well organized. Even the Appendices with a comprehensive list and brief bios of the main characters, and the integral texts of President Truman's speech to Congress in 1947 and of Secretary of State Marshall at Harvard's commencement in June of the same year, where he introduced the need and moral obligation for the US, in its newly acquired superpower status, to provide a huge, unprecedented help program (based on grants, not loans) for 16 western European nations, are also well worth reading, and....reflecting on how abysmally lower the standard of public speeches by politicians is now, compared to the courageous and idealistic approach of only 70 years ago!
As for the book itself, I found it very interesting, with some unexpected surprises regarding events that happened before I was born but really shaped my own life. I was surprised to find a thread from an unprecedented decision, a historic first, of a conquering power to give away immense resources to the conquered enemy nations, Germany and Italy, to my own life, admiration for America, and eventually my decision to leave my own country and move here. So, in a way, by learning how the idea of the Marshall Plan hatched ad took hold, I learn more about myself.
But I found the book also extraordinarily relevant to our current predicament, because it offers, in a rich, step-by-step narrative, an excellent example of how America's system of government was designed to work, in a completely by-partisan way, enabling politicians from both sides of the aisle to take a counter-intuitive risk and converge on a potentially unpopular initiative because it was "the right thing to do for the nation", even if it was likely to jeopardize their respective political ambitions: President Truman, a Democrat facing an imminent election among consistently negative polls, and Senator Vanderberg, a Republican in a Republican-dominated Congress, sacrificing his chances to obtain his party's nomination, as, in fact, actually happened. Vanderberg's speech in support of the Democratic President's initiative, reported in the book, is so obviously on a different, much higher plane than what we hear from politicians these days that it made me cringe.
In summary, an unexpectedly engrossing story. A few months ago my older daughter, who was born in this country but holds dual citizenship, was so disgusted with the current political situation that she asked me what could I possibly have been thinking when I left Italy and moved to the US so many years ago. The answer is in this book: I came because of *that* America, the one that, after winning a terrible war, decided to put its erstwhile enemies back on their feet, and, working closely with some equally enlightened European politicians, made it possible for us all to enjoy an unprecedented 75 years of peace, prosperity and democratic freedom. Even now, despite the political decay, the racial discord, the violence and all the other problems, I don't regret my decision: these 404 pages are a tremendous civic lesson, an eloquent explanation of why I still believe in America, *that* America.
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Leandro Santana de Oliveira
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