The Marshall Plan: America, Britain, And The Reconstruction Of Western Europe, 1947-1952
The subtitle is important. Based to a considerable extent on American and British archives, this book concentrates on the relations of the two countries during the period of the Marshall Plan and its blurred ending in rearmament. One major theme concerns the American acceptance of the British view that global responsibilities and the sterling area made it impossible for the United Kingdom to enter fully into the economic integration of Western Europe. Another major contention is that, although the Americans sought to remodel Europe in their own image, Europe resisted sufficiently so that "in the end, America was made the European way." This interesting and useful book overlaps Imanuel Wexler's The Marshall Plan Revisited (noted in Foreign Affairs, Spring 1984) and Alan Milward's The Reconstruction of Western Europe (which has just appeared in paperback). There is, however, enough difference in coverage and approach to make it necessary for serious students of the period to look at all three books.
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