A Sabre for Eisenhower: Forging Transatlantic Bonds for the Twentieth Century #21

Dutch diplomats enterpreting American goals

The leader of the Dutch delegation, Hans Hirschfeld, turned out to be an excellent interpreter of ‘vague’ American demands. Good personal contacts between Dutch and American policymakers enabled Europeans, Hirschfeld in particular, to make sense of what the Americans meant with these ‘constructive plans’. Clayton had been quite clear in off-the-record meetings with his European counterparts in Paris, shedding the ambiguousness of his colleagues in Washington. He expected nothing less than the eventual creation of large European market based on the American model. Clayton knew that it was not realistic to expect the Europeans to set up a full-blown European economic federation at this stage, but Hirschfeld was a smart thinker and developed an actionable plan for intra-European payments that would bring Clayton’s eventual goal one step closer.

In proposing increased European currency convertibility, Hirschfeld was acting along the lines envisioned by Clayton and in the spirit of the American government’s ultimate ideas for an economically integrated European continent. In addition, Hirschfeld was an early advocate of German economic recovery in a European framework. This was something that the French resented, but the Americans considered it necessary for Europe’s recovery. Hirschfeld also fully grasped the urgency of the moment. To him the Marshall Plan presented a unique opportunity, not just for his own country, but for Europe as a whole. Failure to take further steps on the road towards European cooperation, he noted, would ‘promote a tendency to autarchy’, which ‘would mean that the countries of Europe would become more and more isolated from each other, as occurred at the end of the first world war’. By reminding his European colleagues of the social and economic chaos that haunted the continent in the interwar years, he deliberately struck an emotional chord.

Eventually, the Paris Conference referred Hirschfeld’s plan to a study group, because its purpose was beyond the conference’s mandate. Meanwhile, in Washington, Under Secretary of State Robert A. Lovett was concerned that the lists of economic requirements constrained European thinking to ‘self-help’. Or, in other words, it limited European economic planning to policies that stimulated integration and mutual help between its own economies, instead of furthering economic dependency on America. By late August, Washington became seriously worried about the Paris Conference and the pending European reaction to Secretary Marshall’s speech. The total sum for the ‘sixteen shopping lists’ amounted to a staggering $28 billion. This was considered unacceptable to the American public, and Hirschfeld acknowledged that even before the Americans voiced their objections. Clayton’s emphasis on ‘financial and multilateral arrangements’ to achieve European ‘self-help’ was also a cause of concern. Monetary multilateralism, as Hirschfeld had proposed, fell short of American ambitions and did not help to sell the Marshall Plan to the American public. The State Department sent George Kennan, one of their top diplomats to Paris to straighten things out. Kennan told the Europeans to shift their emphasis from the ‘long-run gains of European economic integration’ to the ‘more urgent short-run needs’. This would make the plan more acceptable to American public opinion. After all, American citizens could very well understand the needs of hungry Europeans.

Hirschfeld at the State Department

The context of the Marshall Plan and its European reception determined the setting in which the honorary sabre was presented to Eisenhower. Initially, the Dutch Ministry of War had opted for a military ceremony in Washington. Eisenhower, after all, was honored for his military achievements. He was clearly a military man and not a diplomat or politician. Yet on the appointed day the ceremony took on a different hue. The reception hosted by Van Kleffens, attended by many American dignitaries, transformed it into a diplomatic setting emphasizing the strong ties between the two countries. In view of the large-scale public relations campaign to ‘sell’ the Marshall Plan to the American voters, this was a sensible move. Expressing gratitude to a country in the midst of the ‘second act’ in the liberation of Europe, as it was dubbed, could potentially win over an American public skeptical of dispatching more aid to Europe.

A week before the ceremony Hirschfeld also arrived in Washington. He had boarded the Queen Mary in London to cross the Atlantic, together with American Congressional leaders who had been on a tour to acquaint themselves with the dire economic state of European countries, in particular Germany. Several representatives of the Committee for European Economic Cooperation also sailed on the Queen Mary, including the French Robert Marjolin, the British Frank Figgures, and Hirschfeld’s fellow Dutch citizen Ernst van der Beugel. The atmosphere aboard the Queen Mary had been very friendly, as some of the travelers later recalled. Hirschfeld was unable to attend the reception for Eisenhower, as he had to answer questions from American policymakers about the European response to Marshall’s speech. In a painstaking last-minute effort, and under considerable American pressure, the Europeans had reduced their request for aid to acceptable levels. The meetings between the American and European delegations in Washington had been very complex and technical, but in the end did help to convince American policymakers of the feasibility of the plan, as well as of European intentions regarding economic recovery and mutual aid.