George C. Marshall :: essays research papers

&9George C. Marshall was born on declination 31, 1880, in Uniontown, Pennsylvania. He graduated from the Virginia Military Institute (VMI) in 1901 and was commissioned a Second Lieutenant. During World War I he was stationed in France and won acclaim for his direction of the Meuse-Argonne offensive. Before the offensive, Marshall was responsible for the withdrawal of 200,000 men, and replacing them with 600,000 American soldiers, making sure that there were hospitals to treat the sick and wounded, moving much than 3,000 cannons and 40,000 tons of ammunition, all the while hiding these movements from the Germans by moving only at night.&9After World War I he was a high-level aide to General John J. Pershing. Prior to the outbreak of World War II he progressed steadily from assistant chief-of-staff of the U.S. Army (July, 1938) to lieutenant chief of staff (October, 1938), to chief of staff the following year. In 1944, Marshall was promoted to General of the Army. He spent a y ear in China in 1945-46 as President Trumans representative, attempting to bring about a peaceful resolution to the conflict between the nationalists and the communists.&9As Secretary of State from 1947 to 1949, he developed an economic program, the Marshall Plan, to help bring relief to war torn nations in europium. The plan stipulated that the United States war prepared to assist atomic number 63 on certain terms. The European countries were to (1) Confer and Determine their needs on a continental basis (2) show what resources they could put into a common puddle for economic rebuilding (3) stabilize their currencies and (4) try to remove trade barriers so that goods could flow freely throughout the continent. With the assistance of the Marshall Plan, westerly Europe began to happen from the ravages of war. Marshalls effort to include the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe in this grand design was rejected by Moscow. As Western Europe rebuilt, Europe was divided both economical ly and ideologically, and conflicting politics soon laid the ground for "The Cold War". When it became evident that the gap between Eastern and Western Europe would not be bridged, and that the Western European states feared for their safety, Marshall was one of the leaders who created the North Atlantic Treaty Organization which has ensured the security of the West. The establishment of NATO in 1949 achieved a balance of power in Europe that endured until the end of the Cold War.