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Mules and money

Greece after World War II was among the most shattered nations in Europe, but the Marshall Plan saved the nation from total collapse, U.S. Ambassador Charles P. Ries said in Athens as the United States and Europe prepared to mark the 60th anniversary of the Marshall Plan next week.

"Marshall Plan money came to Greece at the right time and, through our bilateral cooperation, to the right places," he said in an article written for the Athens News.

Mr. Ries said Greece received more money per capita than any other nation, and the aid was not just cash.

"Most of it went to agricultural assistance, everything from importing 20,000 mules, 960,000 pruning shears and processing equipment to lessons in packaging and marketing," Mr. Ries said.

The plan, conceived by Secretary of State George C. Marshall Jr., distributed $12.7 billion throughout 16 European nations and laid the foundation for both the European Union and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the ambassador said.

He noted that the aid would be equal to $107 billion in today's money. Greece received $1.2 billion, which would be about $10 billion in 2007 dollars.

"We should remember that the Greece of 1947 was a very different one from the Greece of today," Mr. Ries wrote.

"The major ports were barely functioning, and there were few ships in service, only about 20 percent of the railway network was operational, the main roads had been destroyed, communications systems were down, over a thousand villages had been burned, 85 percent of children were tubercular, [gross domestic product] was 41 percent of prewar GDP, and industrial production was about 30 percent of prewar levels."

Gen. Marshall, who served as Army chief of staff during the war, was secretary of state from 1947 to 1949. He announced the plan, formally called the European Economic Recovery Program, on June 4, 1947.