America's Feeble Weapon—Funding the Marshall Plan in France and Italy, 1948-1950

Unlike earlier studies of the Marshall Plan, this volume concentrates not on events in Washington, but on those in France and Italy--the second and third largest beneficiaries of the Plan. Using U.S., French, and Italian sources, the author analyzes the impact of the Plan on French and Italian economic policy between 1948 and 1950. Taking neither a "revisionist" nor "realist" stance, the author argues that massive American aid to Western Europe was a perceived political necessity--that French and Italian governments shared with Truman the strategic-ideological goal of Communist containment. Yet, not all of the goals embedded in the Plan could be implemented, and America did not, therefore, have a decisive influence in reshaping postwar French or Italian economic policies.

CHIARELLA ESPOSITO is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Mississippi and the author of several papers and articles.