In July 2011 a new book with diplomatic documents was released by the Service of Diplomatic and Historical Archives edited by the Director of the Service Photini Tomai. It is entitled “Documentary History of Greece: 1943-1951, Truman Doctrine and Marshall Plan” (Papazisis Publishers, Athens 2011) and it is a translated and thoroughly revised and completed version in English of an older publication of the Service in Greek. The volume is comprised of 181 documents relating to the American aid made available to Greece, amongst other European countries, after the Second World War. Along with the economic reconstruction of the country, which was given primacy in the prologue to the decision taken by the American Congress, it traces the political, social and military implications of the implementation of the economic recovery program extended throughout Greece especially after the Civil War. The extensive historical note by the volume’s editor covers the entire range of these parameters, both chronologically and thematically, with many comments based on Greek and American documents. Included in the publication is a timetable, biographical information, rare photographic material and the testimony of a former Greek employee at the Embassy of the United States in Athens responsible for the implementation of certain aspects of the Marshall Plan in Greece. A special chapter is dedicated to the production of short films on the implementation of the Marshall Plan in Europe. Of a total of 200 films, only 117 can be found today and from these, more than 10 films deal with Greece. Some of the titles are: "The Story of Koula”, “Victory at Thermopylae”, “Return from the Valley”, “Island Odyssey”, “A Doctor for Ardaknos”, “Corinth Canal”, “ERP in Action”, etc. The best known among them is "The One-Hundred Day Road", still shown each year at the feast of the village Kosmas in Arcadia. It is about the road connecting two villages, the mountainous Kosmas with lowland Geraki, pulling the residents of the first one from the isolation in which they had been condemned due to the destruction of the roads caused by the bombings during the war.
Greece emerged from its participation on the Allied side in World War II deeply wounded, with heavy military and civilian losses, its natural and national resources pillaged, its merchant marine destroyed, its economy almost non-existent. The Greek people could not survive without international assistance. The humanitarian aid (primarily American) dispensed through UNRRA kept hundreds of thousands of Greeks alive. But to achieve the massive aid flows necessary to rebuild the Greek economy and make it sustainable, Greek politicians saw no alternative but to enlist their country in the broader geostrategic calculations of the United States. The Marshall Plan truly helped Greece. It remains a powerful historical bond between Europe and the United States, between Athens and Washington. Among the heartening lessons of this volume’s documents is their reminder of the depth of the reservoir of shared idealism and good will that tie the two peoples together both in good times and in bad.
August 5, 2011