{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "bskyPostRef": {
    "cid": "bafyreifxgjlg4eb5je7u56hl5djji5rlo4yhmygcip4i3vcyolj5dgzqkq",
    "uri": "at://did:plc:rzxm2r7lop5f2v5ssp345vgu/app.bsky.feed.post/3mjyco4lhahy2"
  },
  "coverImage": {
    "$type": "blob",
    "ref": {
      "$link": "bafkreidoggzm5vzyabdcdsepbcrqzwjtybjbnut3pgc2ozagr7tdmohviq"
    },
    "mimeType": "image/jpeg",
    "size": 303014
  },
  "path": "/2026/04/present-at-the-creation-trumans-decision-to-intervene-in-greece-and-turkey-in-1947/",
  "publishedAt": "2026-04-21T05:40:00.000Z",
  "site": "https://providencemag.com",
  "tags": [
    "American History",
    "Cold War",
    "Greece",
    "Harry Truman",
    "History",
    "The Latest",
    "Turkey"
  ],
  "textContent": "Late in the day on Friday, February 21, 1947, British Ambassador Lord Inverchapel arrived at the old State Department building just west of the White House, and asked to see Secretary of State George C. Marshall. General Marshall—freshly returned from a year attempting to mollify both sides of China’s civil war—had already gone home. This key architect of the postwar order assiduously followed the same schedule every weekday, arriving at 7:30 and departing at 5, never to be disturbed at home, except by a call from the President. He did not work weekends.\n\nAssistant Secretary of State Dean Acheson therefore received Ambassador Inverchapel and the letter he was bearing, promising to hand it to Secretary Marshall himself on Monday morning. Informed that the letter was very important, Acheson asked the ambassador if he would leave a copy “informally” so that he and his weekend staff could consider it before Marshall returned on Monday. Inverchapel indeed had a carbon copy, which he handed to Acheson and departed. Acheson read it and immediately called the President, who was meeting with Clark Clifford, from whose memoirs, _Counsel to the President,_ this account comes. At that time, on a Friday afternoon, Clark and Harry, both from Missouri, were in the Oval Office with their feet up, having a bourbon and branch water while re-hashing the events of the week.\n\nClifford writes:\n\n> “The message was blunt and to the point: the British having, ‘already strained their resources to the utmost,’ wished to inform the U.S. that British assistance to Greece and Turkey would terminate on March 31—barely five weeks away. The British expressed the hope that the US would assume their burden on both countries, which they estimated would be between $240 and $280 for Greece, and about $150 million for Turkey. These sums, still substantial today, were staggering in 1947 dollars, totaling about 1 percent of a federal budget of only $41 billion.”\n\nThe news was not welcome, but not unexpected either. The British had been dropping hints about their financial straits for months. The two men discussed the situation for a few minutes and left for the weekend. That is how business was done in those days.\n\nAfter consideration the following week, Marshall and his staff recommended that the President ask Congress for permission to make a major financial commitment to Greece and Turkey, recommending further that he do so by addressing both houses of Congress in joint session. That is also how business was done in those days. In addition to his seven annual State of the Union addresses, President Truman spoke to Congress in person on nine separate occasions.\n\nThus, on March 12, 1947, President Truman asked Congress in person for assistance to Greece and Turkey to preserve their systems of democratic governance and territorial integrity from the threat of Soviet communism. Clifford writes:\n\n> “I watched from the Executive Gallery with Mrs. Truman and Marny (Mrs. Clifford). The President spoke at a slower pace than normal, while the audience listened somberly, without any evident enthusiasm. Applause interrupted the speech only three times, and not at the most critical passages. For most members of Congress, this was not so much a historic occasion as another unfortunate foreign problem to confront when what voters really wanted was housing, jobs, and meat.” (There was a meat shortage, very much on voters’ minds, in America after World War II.)\n\nSince then, one might say that everything has changed and nothing has changed. The alliance system put in place by bipartisan agreement after World War II is now in tatters. Yet what most voters want remains the same: housing, jobs, and food.\n\nVarious wise men advised the President what to put in this speech. The consensus among them was that the American public had no appetite for continued foreign commitments. The President had to make a strong case that the problem of the balance of power in southeastern Europe bordering upon the Soviet Union was a problem directly facing Americans. He argued thus:\n\n“The seeds of totalitarian regimes are nurtured by misery and want. They spread and grow in the evil soil of poverty and strife. They reach their full growth when the hope of a people for a better life has died. We must keep that hope alive. The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms. If we falter in our leadership, we may endanger the peace of the world—and we shall surely endanger the welfare of this Nation.”\n\nCongress approved his request for $400 million two months later, on May 22, 1947. This became the basis of a bipartisan American foreign policy for decades to come, not just a declaration of principles but an allocation of capital. Republican Senator Vandenberg of Michigan, Chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, a stout isolationist before the war, introduced the legislation, which passed 67-23 in the Senate, in the House 287–107; a mixture of Democrats and Republicans voting for and against.\n\nCongress and President worked acrimoniously and yet effectively. The Marshall Plan soon appropriated a much greater sum to the aid of Europe; the War and Navy Departments merged into the Department of Defense; a vast government intelligence community was born; the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and a variety of alliances were formalized; all after considerable consultation within the government departments and foreign governments involved, with leading members of Congress from both parties, not to mention a variety of academics, Washington opinion writers and pundits; and final approval, after much debate, by Congress.\n\nDespite cooperating on foreign affairs, this same Congress defied President Truman’s domestic program, approving very little of the vast sums and legislation he requested, and passed the Taft-Hartley Labor Management Relations Act over the President’s veto on June 23, 1947, just a few weeks after Truman proposed the Marshall Plan, for which Congress appropriated some $13 billion early in 1948.\n\nBecause of the lack of action on his domestic program, Truman called Congress into session in the summer of 1948, making no one happy. Members of Congress enjoyed their lengthy summer vacations back then. Washingtonians who remained in town savored their long, hot, uneventful summers. Expecting Truman’s defeat in the fall, the Republican-led Congress approved almost nothing he asked for. The President then proceeded to flay “the Do Nothing 80th Congress” throughout his reelection campaign, winning a stunning reelection on November 2.\n\nThat is also how business was done in those days. The country was no less divided over a wide variety of issues than it is today. Yet however much presidents and congressional leaders diverged, they also managed to agree when it mattered. None of Truman’s contentious Congresses shut the government down. A number of vetoes were sustained and a number overridden. The “Do Nothing 80th Congress” actually accomplished a great deal—more than any recent Congress. Decades of foreign policy consensus and a booming economy that distributed its gains throughout the population followed. With good reason, Dean Acheson titled his remembrances of that time: _Present at the Creation_.\n\nWhat would it take to bring back the lessons of the 1940s for today?",
  "title": "Present at the Creation: Truman’s Decision to Intervene in Greece and Turkey in 1947"
}