On June 4, 1947, Secretary of State George C. Marshall gave a speech in which he announced that the United States was willing to offer economic assistance to the war-torn nations of Europe to help in their recovery. The Marshall Plan, as this program came to be known, eventually provided billions of dollars to European nations and helped stave off economic disaster in many of them. The Soviet reaction to Marshall’s speech was a stony silence. However, Foreign Minister Molotov agreed to a meeting on June 27 with his British and French counterparts to discuss the European reaction to the American offer.
