Reflection of Cold War Ideologies and Anti-Colonialism Manifesto

Instructions

there are 4 questions each and they all need to be 400 word responses. No outside sources allowed besides the “Fidel Castro_ History Will Absolve Me – Analysis _ Milestone Documents – Milestone Documents.pdf” and “Truman Doctrine – Analysis _ Milestone Documents – Milestone Documents.pdf”. Those are the 2 sources that needed to be used.

Down below in files I will upload the 2 documents needed for the essay, as well as the questions. so a total of 3 files

Harry S. Truman: Truman Doctrine

1. What is the Truman Doctrine? Why does President Truman believe this foreign policy doctrine is necessary?

2. How is the Truman Doctrine an example of the Cold War conflict? How does it reflect ideas proposed by Winston Churchill in his Iron Curtain Speech?

Fidel Castro: History Will Absolve Me

1. To what extent does this document from the Cuban Revolution represent an event in the history of the Cold War?

2. To what extent does this document from the Cuban Revolution represent an event in the history of anti-colonialism/decolonization?

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Fidel Castro: History Will Absolve Me
(1953)
Word Count: 5276
Document Text
In terms of struggle, when we talk about people we’re talking about the six hundred thousand Cubans without work, who want
to earn their daily bread honestly without having to emigrate from their homeland in search of a livelihood; the ﬁve hundred
thousand farm laborers who live in miserable shacks, who work four months of the year and starve the rest, sharing their misery
with their children, who don’t have an inch of land to till and whose existence would move any heart not made of stone; the four
hundred thousand industrial workers and laborers whose retirement funds have been embezzled, whose beneﬁts are being taken
away, whose homes are wretched quarters, whose salaries pass from the hands of the boss to those of the moneylender, whose
future is a pay reduction and dismissal, whose life is endless work and whose only rest is the tomb; the one hundred thousand
small farmers who live and die working land that is not theirs, looking at it with the sadness of Moses gazing at the promised
land, to die without ever owning it, who like feudal serfs have to pay for the use of their parcel of land by giving up a portion of
its produce, who cannot love it, improve it, beautify it nor plant a cedar or an orange tree on it because they never know when a
sheriff will come with the rural guard to evict them from it; the thirty thousand teachers and professors who are so devoted,
dedicated and so necessary to the better destiny of future generations and who are so badly treated and paid; the twenty
thousand small business men weighed down by debts, ruined by the crisis and harangued by a plague of grafting and venal
ofﬁcials; the ten thousand young professional people: doctors, engineers, lawyers, veterinarians, school teachers, dentists,
pharmacists, newspapermen, painters, sculptors, etc., who ﬁnish school with their degrees anxious to work and full of hope, only
to ﬁnd themselves at a dead end, all doors closed to them, and where no ears hear their clamor or supplication. These are the
people, the ones who know misfortune and, therefore, are capable of ﬁghting with limitless courage! To these people whose
desperate roads through life have been paved with the bricks of betrayal and false promises, we were not going to say: “We will
give you … ” but rather: “Here it is, now ﬁght for it with everything you have, so that liberty and happiness may be yours!”
The ﬁve revolutionary laws that would have been proclaimed immediately after the capture of the Moncada Barracks and would
have been broadcast to the nation by radio must be included in the indictment. It is possible that Colonel Chaviano may
deliberately have destroyed these documents, but even if he has I remember them.
The ﬁrst revolutionary law would have returned power to the people and proclaimed the 1940 Constitution the Supreme Law of
the State until such time as the people should decide to modify or change it. And in order to effect its implementation and
punish those who violated it—there being no electoral organization to carry this out—the revolutionary movement, as the
circumstantial incarnation of this sovereignty, the only source of legitimate power, would have assumed all the faculties inherent
therein, except that of modifying the Constitution itself: in other words, it would have assumed the legislative, executive and
judicial powers.
This attitude could not be clearer nor more free of vacillation and sterile charlatanry. A government acclaimed by the mass of
rebel people would be vested with every power, everything necessary in order to proceed with the effective implementation of
popular will and real justice. From that moment, the Judicial Power—which since March 10th had placed itself against and
outside the Constitution—would cease to exist and we would proceed to its immediate and total reform before it would once
again assume the power granted it by the Supreme Law of the Republic. Without these previous measures, a return to legality by
putting its custody back into the hands that have crippled the system so dishonorably would constitute a fraud, a deceit, one
more betrayal.
The second revolutionary law would give non-mortgageable and non-transferable ownership of the land to all tenant and
subtenant farmers, lessees, share croppers and squatters who hold parcels of ﬁve caballerías of land or less, and the State would
indemnify the former owners on the basis of the rental which they would have received for these parcels over a period of ten
years.
The third revolutionary law would have granted workers and employees the right to share 30% of the proﬁts of all the large
industrial, mercantile and mining enterprises, including the sugar mills. The strictly agricultural enterprises would be exempt in
consideration of other agrarian laws which would be put into effect.
The fourth revolutionary law would have granted all sugar planters the right to share 55% of sugar production and a minimum
quota of forty thousand arrobas for all small tenant farmers who have been established for three years or more.
The ﬁfth revolutionary law would have ordered the conﬁscation of all holdings and ill-gotten gains of those who had committed
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order to investigate concealed funds of illegal origin, and to request that foreign governments extradite persons and attach
holdings rightfully belonging to the Cuban people. Half of the property recovered would be used to subsidize retirement funds
for workers and the other half would be used for hospitals, asylums and charitable organizations.
Furthermore, it was declared that the Cuban policy in the Americas would be one of close solidarity with the democratic peoples
of this continent, and that all those politically persecuted by bloody tyrannies oppressing our sister nations would ﬁnd generous
asylum, brotherhood and bread in the land of Martí; not the persecution, hunger and treason they ﬁnd today. Cuba should be the
bulwark of liberty and not a shameful link in the chain of despotism.
These laws would have been proclaimed immediately. As soon as the upheaval ended and prior to a detailed and far reaching
study, they would have been followed by another series of laws and fundamental measures, such as the Agrarian Reform, the
Integral Educational Reform, nationalization of the electric power trust and the telephone trust, refund to the people of the illegal
and repressive rates these companies have charged, and payment to the treasury of all taxes brazenly evaded in the past.
All these laws and others would be based on the exact compliance of two essential articles of our Constitution: one of them
orders the outlawing of large estates, indicating the maximum area of land any one person or entity may own for each type of
agricultural enterprise, by adopting measures which would tend to revert the land to the Cubans. The other categorically orders
the State to use all means at its disposal to provide employment to all those who lack it and to ensure a decent livelihood to each
manual or intellectual laborer. None of these laws can be called unconstitutional. The ﬁrst popularly elected government would
have to respect them, not only because of moral obligations to the nation, but because when people achieve something they have
yearned for throughout generations, no force in the world is capable of taking it away again.
The problem of the land, the problem of industrialization, the problem of housing, the problem of unemployment, the problem
of education and the problem of the people’s health: these are the six problems we would take immediate steps to solve, along
with restoration of civil liberties and political democracy.
This exposition may seem cold and theoretical if one does not know the shocking and tragic conditions of the country with
regard to these six problems, along with the most humiliating political oppression.
Eighty-ﬁve per cent of the small farmers in Cuba pay rent and live under constant threat of being evicted from the land they till.
More than half of our most productive land is in the hands of foreigners. In Oriente, the largest province, the lands of the United
Fruit Company and the West Indian Company link the northern and southern coasts. There are two hundred thousand peasant
families who do not have a single acre of land to till to provide food for their starving children. On the other hand, nearly three
hundred thousand caballerías of cultivable land owned by powerful interests remain uncultivated. If Cuba is above all an
agricultural State, if its population is largely rural, if the city depends on these rural areas, if the people from our countryside
won our war of independence, if our nation’s greatness and prosperity depend on a healthy and vigorous rural population that
loves the land and knows how to work it, if this population depends on a State that protects and guides it, then how can the
present state of affairs be allowed to continue?
Except for a few food, lumber and textile industries, Cuba continues to be primarily a producer of raw materials. We export
sugar to import candy, we export hides to import shoes, we export iron to import plows. … Everyone agrees with the urgent
need to industrialize the nation, that we need steel industries, paper and chemical industries, that we must improve our cattle
and grain production, the technology and processing in our food industry in order to defend ourselves against the ruinous
competition from Europe in cheese products, condensed milk, liquors and edible oils, and the United States in canned goods;
that we need cargo ships; that tourism should be an enormous source of revenue. But the capitalists insist that the workers
remain under the yoke. The State sits back with its arms crossed and industrialization can wait forever.
Just as serious or even worse is the housing problem. There are two hundred thousand huts and hovels in Cuba; four hundred
thousand families in the countryside and in the cities live cramped in huts and tenements without even the minimum sanitary
requirements; two million two hundred thousand of our urban population pay rents which absorb between one ﬁfth and one
third of their incomes; and two million eight hundred thousand of our rural and suburban population lack electricity. We have
the same situation here: if the State proposes the lowering of rents, landlords threaten to freeze all construction; if the State does
not interfere, construction goes on so long as landlords get high rents; otherwise they would not lay a single brick even though
the rest of the population had to live totally exposed to the elements. The utilities monopoly is no better; they extend lines as far
as it is proﬁtable and beyond that point they don’t care if people have to live in darkness for the rest of their lives. The State sits
back with its arms crossed and the people have neither homes nor electricity.
Our educational system is perfectly compatible with everything I’ve just mentioned. Where the peasant doesn’t own the land,
what need is there for agricultural schools? Where there is no industry, what need is there for technical or vocational schools?
Everything follows the same absurd logic; if we don’t have one thing we can’t have the other. In any small European country
there are more than 200 technological and vocational schools; in Cuba only six such schools exist, and their graduates have no
jobs for their skills. The little rural schoolhouses are attended by a mere half of the school age children—barefooted, half-naked
and undernourished—and frequently the teacher must buy necessary school materials from his own salary. Is this the way to
make a nation great?
Only death can liberate one from so much misery. In this respect, however, the State is most helpful—in providing early death for
the people. Ninety per cent of the children in the countryside are consumed by parasites which ﬁlter through their bare feet from
the ground they walk on. Society is moved to compassion when it hears of the kidnapping or murder of one child, but it is
indifferent to the mass murder of so many thousands of children who die every year from lack of facilities, agonizing with pain.
Their innocent eyes, death already shining in them, seem to look into some vague inﬁnity as if entreating forgiveness for human
selﬁshness, as if asking God to stay His wrath. And when the head of a family works only four months a year, with what can he
purchase clothing and medicine for his children? They will grow up with rickets, with not a single good tooth in their mouths by
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hospitals, which are always full, accept only patients recommended by some powerful politician who, in return, demands the
votes of the unfortunate one and his family so that Cuba may continue forever in the same or worse condition.
With this background, is it not understandable that from May to December over a million persons are jobless and that Cuba, with
a population of ﬁve and a half million, has a greater number of unemployed than France or Italy with a population of forty
million each?
When you try a defendant for robbery, Honorable Judges, do you ask him how long he has been unemployed? Do you ask him
how many children he has, which days of the week he ate and which he didn’t, do you investigate his social context at all? You
just send him to jail without further thought. But those who burn warehouses and stores to collect insurance do not go to jail,
even though a few human beings may have gone up in ﬂames. The insured have money to hire lawyers and bribe judges. You
imprison the poor wretch who steals because he is hungry; but none of the hundreds who steal millions from the Government
has ever spent a night in jail. You dine with them at the end of the year in some elegant club and they enjoy your respect. In
Cuba, when a government ofﬁcial becomes a millionaire overnight and enters the fraternity of the rich, he could very well be
greeted with the words of that opulent character out of Balzac—Taillefer—who in his toast to the young heir to an enormous
fortune, said: “Gentlemen, let us drink to the power of gold! Mr. Valentine, a millionaire six times over, has just ascended the
throne. He is king, can do everything, is above everyone, as all the rich are. Henceforth, equality before the law, established by
the Constitution, will be a myth for him; for he will not be subject to laws: the laws will be subject to him. There are no courts nor
are there sentences for millionaires.”
The nation’s future, the solutions to its problems, cannot continue to depend on the selﬁsh interests of a dozen big businessmen
nor on the cold calculations of proﬁts that ten or twelve magnates draw up in their air-conditioned ofﬁces. The country cannot
continue begging on its knees for miracles from a few golden calves, like the Biblical one destroyed by the prophet’s fury. Golden
calves cannot perform miracles of any kind. The problems of the Republic can be solved only if we dedicate ourselves to ﬁght for
it with the same energy, honesty and patriotism our liberators had when they founded it. Statesmen like Carlos Saladrigas,
whose statesmanship consists of preserving the status quo and mouthing phrases like “absolute freedom of enterprise,”
“guarantees to investment capital” and “law of supply and demand,” will not solve these problems. Those ministers can chat
away in a Fifth Avenue mansion until not even the dust of the bones of those whose problems require immediate solution
remains. In this present-day world, social problems are not solved by spontaneous generation.
A revolutionary government backed by the people and with the respect of the nation, after cleansing the different institutions of
all venal and corrupt ofﬁcials, would proceed immediately to the country’s industrialization, mobilizing all inactive capital,
currently estimated at about 1.5 billion pesos, through the National Bank and the Agricultural and Industrial Development Bank,
and submitting this mammoth task to experts and men of absolute competence totally removed from all political machines for
study, direction, planning and realization.
After settling the one hundred thousand small farmers as owners on the land which they previously rented, a revolutionary
government would immediately proceed to settle the land problem. First, as set forth in the Constitution, it would establish the
maximum amount of land to be held by each type of agricultural enterprise and would acquire the excess acreage by
expropriation, recovery of swampland, planting of large nurseries, and reserving of zones for reforestation. Secondly, it would
distribute the remaining land among peasant families with priority given to the larger ones, and would promote agricultural
cooperatives for communal use of expensive equipment, freezing plants and uniﬁed professional technical management of
farming and cattle raising. Finally, it would provide resources, equipment, protection and useful guidance to the peasants.
A revolutionary government would solve the housing problem by cutting all rents in half, by providing tax exemptions on
homes inhabited by the owners; by tripling taxes on rented homes; by tearing down hovels and replacing them with modern
apartment buildings; and by ﬁnancing housing all over the island on a scale heretofore unheard of, with the criterion that, just as
each rural family should possess its own tract of land, each city family should own its own house or apartment. There is plenty
of building material and more than enough manpower to make a decent home for every Cuban. But if we continue to wait for
the golden calf, a thousand years will have gone by and the problem will remain the same. On the other hand, today possibilities
of taking electricity to the most isolated areas on the island are greater than ever. The use of nuclear energy in this ﬁeld is now a
reality and will greatly reduce the cost of producing electricity.
With these three projects and reforms, the problem of unemployment would automatically disappear and the task of improving
public health and ﬁghting against disease would become much less difﬁcult.
Finally, a revolutionary government would undertake the integral reform of the educational system, bringing it into line with the
projects just mentioned with the idea of educating those generations which will have the privilege of living in a happier land. Do
not forget the words of the Apostle: “A grave mistake is being made in Latin America: in countries that live almost completely
from the produce of the land, men are being educated exclusively for urban life and are not trained for farm life.” “The happiest
country is the one which has best educated its sons, both in the instruction of thought and the direction of their feelings.” “An
educated country will always be strong and free.”
The soul of education, however, is the teacher, and in Cuba the teaching profession is miserably underpaid. Despite this, no one
is more dedicated than the Cuban teacher. Who among us has not learned his three Rs in the little public schoolhouse? It is time
we stopped paying pittances to these young men and women who are entrusted with the sacred task of teaching our youth. No
teacher should earn less than 200 pesos, no secondary teacher should make less than 350 pesos, if they are to devote themselves
exclusively to their high calling without suffering want. What is more, all rural teachers should have free use of the various
systems of transportation; and, at least once every ﬁve years, all teachers should enjoy a sabbatical leave of six months with pay
so they may attend special refresher courses at home or abroad to keep abreast of the latest developments in their ﬁeld. In this
way, the curriculum and the teaching system can be easily improved. Where will the money be found for all this? When there is
an end to the embezzlement of government funds, when public ofﬁcials stop taking graft from the large companies that owe
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against the people), when there is more interest in educating the people than in killing them there will be more than enough
money.
Cuba could easily provide for a population three times as great as it has now, so there is no excuse for the abject poverty of a
single one of its present inhabitants. The markets should be overﬂowing with produce, pantries should be full, all hands should
be working. This is not an inconceivable thought. What is inconceivable is that anyone should go to bed hungry while there is a
single inch of unproductive land; that children should die for lack of medical attention; what is inconceivable is that 30% of our
farm people cannot write their names and that 99% of them know nothing of Cuba’s history. What is inconceivable is that the
majority of our rural people are now living in worse circumstances than the Indians Columbus discovered in the fairest land that
human eyes had ever seen.
To those who would call me a dreamer, I quote the words of Martí: “A true man does not seek the path where advantage lies, but
rather the path where duty lies, and this is the only practical man, whose dream of today will be the law of tomorrow, because he
who has looked back on the essential course of history and has seen ﬂaming and bleeding peoples seethe in the cauldron of the
ages knows that, without a single exception, the future lies on the side of duty.”
Only when we understand that such a high ideal inspired them can we conceive of the heroism of the young men who fell in
Santiago. The meager material means at our disposal was all that prevented sure success. When the soldiers were told that Prío
had given us a million pesos, they were told this in the regime’s attempt to distort the most important fact: the fact that our
Movement had no link with past politicians: that this Movement is a new Cuban generation with its own ideas, rising up against
tyranny; that this Movement is made up of young people who were barely seven years old when Batista perpetrated the ﬁrst of
his crimes in 1934. The lie about the million pesos could not have been more absurd. If, with less than 20,000 pesos, we armed
165 men and attacked a regiment and a squadron, then with a million pesos we could have armed 8,000 men, to attack 50
regiments and 50 squadrons—and Ugalde Carrillo still would not have found out until Sunday, July 26th, at 5:15 a.m. I assure
you that for every man who fought, twenty well trained men were unable to ﬁght for lack of weapons. When these young men
marched along the streets of Havana in the student demonstration of the Martí Centennial, they solidly packed six blocks. If even
200 more men had been able to ﬁght, or we had possessed 20 more hand grenades, perhaps this Honorable Court would have
been spared all this inconvenience.
The politicians spend millions buying off consciences, whereas a handful of Cubans who wanted to save their country’s honor
had to face death barehanded for lack of funds. This shows how the country, to this very day, has been governed not by generous
and dedicated men, but by political racketeers, the scum of our public life.
With the greatest pride I tell you that in accordance with our principles we have never asked a politician, past or present, for a
penny. Our means were assembled with incomparable sacriﬁce. For example, Elpidio Sosa, who sold his job and came to me one
day with 300 pesos “for the cause”; Fernando Chenard, who sold the photographic equipment with which he earned his living;
Pedro Marrero, who contributed several months’ salary and who had to be stopped from actually selling the very furniture in his
house; Oscar Alcalde, who sold his pharmaceutical laboratory; Jesús Montané, who gave his ﬁve years’ savings, and so on with
many others, each giving the little he had.
One must have great faith in one’s country to do such a thing. The memory of these acts of idealism bring me straight to the most
bitter chapter of this defense—the price the tyranny made them pay for wanting to free Cuba from oppression and injustice.
Beloved corpses, you that once
Were the hope of my Homeland,
Cast upon my forehead
The dust of your decaying bones!
Touch my heart with your cold hands!
Groan at my ears!
Each of my moans will
Turn into the tears of one more tyrant!
Gather around me! Roam about,
That my soul may receive your spirits
And give me the horror of the tombs
For tears are not enough
When one lives in infamous bondage!
Multiply the crimes of November 27th, 1871 by ten and you will have the monstrous and repulsive crimes of July 26th, 27th, 28th
and 29th, 1953, in the province of Oriente. These are still fresh in our memory, but someday when years have passed, when the
skies of the nation have cleared once more, when tempers have calmed and fear no longer torments our spirits, then we will
begin to see the magnitude of this massacre in all its shocking dimension, and future generations will be struck with horror when
they look back on these acts of barbarity unprecedented in our history. But I do not want to become enraged. I need clearness of
mind and peace in my heavy heart in order to relate the facts as simply as possible, in no sense dramatizing them, but just as
they took place. As a Cuban I am ashamed that heartless men should have perpetrated such unthinkable crimes, dishonoring our
nation before the rest of the world.
The tyrant Batista was never a man of scruples. He has never hesitated to tell his people the most outrageous lies. To justify his
treacherous coup of March 10th, he concocted stories about a ﬁctitious uprising in the Army, supposedly scheduled to take place
in April, and which he “wanted to avert so that the Republic might not be drenched in blood.” A ridiculous little tale nobody
ever believed! And when he himself did want to drench the Republic in blood, when he wanted to smother in terror and torture
the just rebellion of Cuba’s youth, who were not willing to be his slaves, then he contrived still more fantastic lies. How little
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respect one must have for a people when one tries to deceive them so miserably! On the very day of my arrest I publicly assumed
the responsibility for our armed movement of July 26th. If there had been an iota of truth in even one of the many statements the
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Dictator made against our ﬁghters in his speech of July 27th, it would have been enough to undermine the moral impact of my
case. Why, then, was I not brought to trial? Why were medical certiﬁcates forged? Why did they violate all procedural laws and
ignore so scandalously the rulings of the Court? Why were so many things done, things never before seen in a Court of Law, in
order to prevent my appearance at all costs? In contrast, I could not begin to tell you all I went through in order to appear. I
asked the Court to bring me to trial in accordance with all established principles, and I denounced the underhanded schemes
that were afoot to prevent it. I wanted to argue with them face to face. But they did not wish to face me. Who was afraid of the
truth, and who was not?
The statements made by the Dictator at Camp Columbia might be considered amusing if they were not so drenched in blood. He
claimed we were a group of hirelings and that there were many foreigners among us. He said that the central part of our plan
was an attempt to kill him—him, always him. As if the men who attacked the Moncada Barracks could not have killed him and
twenty like him if they had approved of such methods. He stated that our attack had been planned by ex-President Prío, and that
it had been ﬁnanced with Prío’s money. It has been irrefutably proven that no link whatsoever existed between our Movement
and the last regime. He claimed that we had machine guns and hand-grenades. Yet the military technicians have stated right here
in this Court that we only had one machine gun and not a single hand-grenade. He said that we had beheaded the sentries. Yet
death certiﬁcates and medical reports of all the Army’s casualties show not one death caused by the blade. But above all and
most important, he said that we stabbed patients at the Military Hospital. Yet the doctors from that hospital—Army doctors—
have testiﬁed that we never even occupied the building, that no patient was either wounded or killed by us, and that the hospital
lost only one employee, a janitor, who imprudently stuck his head out of an open window.
Whenever a Chief of State, or anyone pretending to be one, makes declarations to the nation, he speaks not just to hear the sound
of his own voice. He always has some speciﬁc purpose and expects some speciﬁc reaction, or has a given intention. Since our
military defeat had already taken place, insofar as we no longer represented any actual threat to the dictatorship, why did they
slander us like that? If it is still not clear that this was a blood-drenched speech, that it was simply an attempt to justify the crimes
that they had been perpetrating since the night before and that they were going to continue to perpetrate, then, let ﬁgures speak
for me: On July 27th, in his speech from the military headquarters, Batista said that the assailants suffered 32 dead. By the end of
the week the number of dead had risen to more than 80 men. In what battles, where, in what clashes, did these young men die?
Before Batista spoke, more than 25 prisoners had been murdered. After Batista spoke ﬁfty more were massacred.
What a great sense of honor those modest Army technicians and professionals had, who did not distort the facts before the
Court, but gave their reports adhering to the strictest truth! These surely are soldiers who honor their uniform; these, surely, are
men! Neither a real soldier nor a true man can degrade his code of honor with lies and crime. I know that many of the soldiers
are indignant at the barbaric assassinations perpetrated. I know that they feel repugnance and shame at the smell of homicidal
blood that impregnates every stone of Moncada Barracks.…
I know that imprisonment will be harder for me than it has ever been for anyone, ﬁlled with cowardly threats and hideous
cruelty. But I do not fear the fury of the miserable tyrant who took the lives of 70 of my comrades. Condemn me. It does not
matter. History will absolve me.
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Harry S. Truman: Truman Doctrine
(1947)
Word Count: 2210
Document Text
Mr. President, Mr. Speaker, Members of the Congress of the United States:
The gravity of the situation which confronts the world today necessitates my appearance before a joint session of the Congress.
The foreign policy and the national security of this country are involved.
One aspect of the present situation, which I wish to present to you at this time for your consideration and decision, concerns
Greece and Turkey.
The United States has received from the Greek Government an urgent appeal for ﬁnancial and economic assistance. Preliminary
reports from the American Economic Mission now in Greece and reports from the American Ambassador in Greece corroborate
the statement of the Greek Government that assistance is imperative if Greece is to survive as a free nation.
I do not believe that the American people and the Congress wish to turn a deaf ear to the appeal of the Greek Government.
Greece is not a rich country. Lack of sufﬁcient natural resources has always forced the Greek people to work hard to make both
ends meet. Since 1940, this industrious and peace loving country has suffered invasion, four years of cruel enemy occupation,
and bitter internal strife.
When forces of liberation entered Greece they found that the retreating Germans had destroyed virtually all the railways, roads,
port facilities, communications, and merchant marine. More than a thousand villages had been burned. Eighty-ﬁve per cent of
the children were tubercular. Livestock, poultry, and draft animals had almost disappeared. Inﬂation had wiped out practically
all savings.
As a result of these tragic conditions, a militant minority, exploiting human want and misery, was able to create political chaos
which, until now, has made economic recovery impossible.
Greece is today without funds to ﬁnance the importation of those goods which are essential to bare subsistence. Under these
circumstances the people of Greece cannot make progress in solving their problems of reconstruction. Greece is in desperate need
of ﬁnancial and economic assistance to enable it to resume purchases of food, clothing, fuel and seeds. These are indispensable
for the subsistence of its people and are obtainable only from abroad. Greece must have help to import the goods necessary to
restore internal order and security, so essential for economic and political recovery.
The Greek Government has also asked for the assistance of experienced American administrators, economists and technicians to
insure that the ﬁnancial and other aid given to Greece shall be used effectively in creating a stable and self-sustaining economy
and in improving its public administration.
The very existence of the Greek state is today threatened by the terrorist activities of several thousand armed men, led by
Communists, who defy the government’s authority at a number of points, particularly along the northern boundaries. A
Commission appointed by the United Nations Security Council is at present investigating disturbed conditions in northern
Greece and alleged border violations along the frontier between Greece on the one hand and Albania, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia
on the other.
Meanwhile, the Greek Government is unable to cope with the situation. The Greek army is small and poorly equipped. It needs
supplies and equipment if it is to restore the authority of the government throughout Greek territory. Greece must have
assistance if it is to become a self-supporting and self-respecting democracy.
The United States must supply that assistance. We have already extended to Greece certain types of relief and economic aid but
these are inadequate.
There is no other country to which democratic Greece can turn.
No other nation is willing and able to provide the necessary support for a democratic Greek government.
The British Government, which has been helping Greece, can give no further ﬁnancial or economic aid after March 31. Great
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Britain
ﬁnds itself under Athe
necessity NofE Wreducing
or liquidating
its commitments
in several parts of
the world, Cincluding
Greece.
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We have considered how the United Nations might assist in this crisis. But the situation is an urgent one requiring immediate
action and the United Nations and its related organizations are not in a position to extend help of the kind that is required.
It is important to note that the Greek Government has asked for our aid in utilizing effectively the ﬁnancial and other assistance
we may give to Greece, and in improving its public administration. It is of the utmost importance that we supervise the use of
any funds made available to Greece; in such a manner that each dollar spent will count toward making Greece self-supporting,
and will help to build an economy in which a healthy democracy can ﬂourish.
No government is perfect. One of the chief virtues of a democracy, however, is that its defects are always visible and under
democratic processes can be pointed out and corrected. The Government of Greece is not perfect. Nevertheless it represents
eighty-ﬁve per cent of the members of the Greek Parliament who were chosen in an election last year. Foreign observers,
including 692 Americans, considered this election to be a fair expression of the views of the Greek people.
The Greek Government has been operating in an atmosphere of chaos and extremism. It has made mistakes. The extension of aid
by this country does not mean that the United States condones everything that the Greek Government has done or will do. We
have condemned in the past, and we condemn now, extremist measures of the right or the left. We have in the past advised
tolerance, and we advise tolerance now.
Greece’s neighbor, Turkey, also deserves our attention.
The future of Turkey as an independent and economically sound state is clearly no less important to the freedom-loving peoples
of the world than the future of Greece. The circumstances in which Turkey ﬁnds itself today are considerably different from those
of Greece. Turkey has been spared the disasters that have beset Greece. And during the war, the United States and Great Britain
furnished Turkey with material aid.
Nevertheless, Turkey now needs our support.
Since the war Turkey has sought ﬁnancial assistance from Great Britain and the United States for the purpose of effecting that
modernization necessary for the maintenance of its national integrity.
That integrity is essential to the preservation of order in the Middle East.
The British government has informed us that, owing to its own difﬁculties can no longer extend ﬁnancial or economic aid to
Turkey.
As in the case of Greece, if Turkey is to have the assistance it needs, the United States must supply it. We are the only country
able to provide that help.
I am fully aware of the broad implications involved if the United States extends assistance to Greece and Turkey, and I shall
discuss these implications with you at this time.
One of the primary objectives of the foreign policy of the United States is the creation of conditions in which we and other
nations will be able to work out a way of life free from coercion. This was a fundamental issue in the war with Germany and
Japan. Our victory was won over countries which sought to impose their will, and their way of life, upon other nations.
To ensure the peaceful development of nations, free from coercion, the United States has taken a leading part in establishing the
United Nations. The United Nations is designed to make possible lasting freedom and independence for all its members. We
shall not realize our objectives, however, unless we are willing to help free peoples to maintain their free institutions and their
national integrity against aggressive movements that seek to impose upon them totalitarian regimes. This is no more than a frank
recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed on free peoples, by direct or indirect aggression, undermine the foundations of
international peace and hence the security of the United States.
The peoples of a number of countries of the world have recently had totalitarian regimes forced upon them against their will.
The Government of the United States has made frequent protests against coercion and intimidation, in violation of the Yalta
agreement, in Poland, Rumania, and Bulgaria. I must also state that in a number of other countries there have been similar
developments.
At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often
not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free
elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of a minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and
oppression, a controlled press and radio; ﬁxed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed
minorities or by outside pressures.
I believe that we must assist free peoples to work out their own destinies in their own way.
I believe that our help should be primarily through economic and ﬁnancial aid which is essential to economic stability and
orderly political processes.
The world is not static, and the status quo is not sacred. But we cannot allow changes in the status quo in violation of the Charter
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of the United Nations by such methods as coercion, or by such subterfuges as political inﬁltration. In helping free and
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independent nations to maintain their freedom, the United States will be giving effect to the principles of the Charter of the
United Nations.
It is necessary only to glance at a map to realize that the survival and integrity of the Greek nation are of grave importance in a
much wider situation. If Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect upon its neighbor, Turkey, would
be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East.
Moreover, the disappearance of Greece as an independent state would have a profound effect upon those countries in Europe
whose peoples are struggling against great difﬁculties to maintain their freedoms and their independence while they repair the
damages of war.
It would be an unspeakable tragedy if these countries, which have struggled so long against overwhelming odds, should lose
that victory for which they sacriﬁced so much. Collapse of free institutions and loss of independence would be disastrous not
only for them but for the world. Discouragement and possibly failure would quickly be the lot of neighboring peoples striving to
maintain their freedom and independence.
Should we fail to aid Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East.
We must take immediate and resolute action.
I therefore ask the Congress to provide authority for assistance to Greece and Turkey in the amount of $400,000,000 for the period
ending June 30, 1948. In requesting these funds, I have taken into consideration the maximum amount of relief assistance which
would be furnished to Greece out of the $350,000,000 which I recently requested that the Congress authorize for the prevention of
starvation and suffering in countries devastated by the war.
In addition to funds, I ask the Congress to authorize the detail of American civilian and military personnel to Greece and Turkey,
at the request of those countries, to assist in the tasks of reconstruction, and for the purpose of supervising the use of such
ﬁnancial and material assistance as may be furnished. I recommend that authority also be provided for the instruction and
training of selected Greek and Turkish personnel.
Finally, I ask that the Congress provide authority which will permit the speediest and most effective use, in terms of needed
commodities, supplies, and equipment, of such funds as may be authorized.
If further funds, or further authority, should be needed for purposes indicated in this message, I shall not hesitate to bring the
situation before the Congress. On this subject the Executive and Legislative branches of the Government must work together.
This is a serious course upon which we embark.
I would not recommend it except that the alternative is much more serious. The United States contributed $341,000,000,000
toward winning World War II. This is an investment in world freedom and world peace.
The assistance that I am recommending for Greece and Turkey amounts to little more than 1 tenth of 1 per cent of this
investment. It is only common sense that we should safeguard this investment and make sure that it was not in vain.
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 our own
nation.
Great responsibilities have been placed upon us by the swift movement of events.
I am conﬁdent that the Congress will face these responsibilities squarely.
OVERVIEW – CONTINUE
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