The guiding notions of the ERP were first put forward by Secretary of State George C. Marshall at the 1947 Harvard commencement exercises where he spoke of the need for an initiative that would assist Europe in its economic recovery. Marshall spoke at length of the physical facts of European distress such as the loss of life, destruction of cities and factories, and shortages of food and coal. He went to the heart of the problem, however, when he said that such "visible destruction was probably less serious than the dislocation of the entire fabric of European economy" that had taken place to such an extent that "the breakdown of the business structure of Europe during the war was complete" (quoted in Pogue 526).
Marshall's discussion of the extent of the destruction was not at all exaggerated. Winston Churchill described postwar Europe as "a rubble heap, a charnel house, a breeding ground of pestilence and hate" (quoted in Maddox 90). In addition to already deplorable conditions harsh drought in the summers of 1946 and 1947 severely reduced crops and the intervening winter, with its immense blizzards and long frozen spells, "had paralyzed the continent" as railroad cars froze to tracks and "coal supplies piled up at mineheads" (Kunz 162). Throughout Europe normal education and training for work had so long been interrupted that many regions were totally unprepared for reconstruction while in areas dominated by the Nazis, as Helmut Schmidt recalls, "ideas about economic and social conditions in the United States did not have a positive cast" (213). Clearly the economic survival of Europe was imperiled and this increased the growing strength of the threat of Soviet domination in much of Western Europe, which American policy makers had come to regard as a threat to themselves as well.
But Marshall also stressed that such a plan would not rely on a unilateral program devised by the United States. As Marshall said, "The init...