the ERP was not parachuted into a vacuum. Western Europe was able to benefit from American help because it was a long-established region of private property, market economics and, except in recent years, stable polities. But for just this reason, western Europe had to make its own decisions and would ultimately insist on doing so. As the British diplomat Oliver Franks put it: ‘The Marshall Plan was about putting American dollars in the hands of Europeans to buy the tools of
