The Marshall Plan Speech   Remarks by the Honorable George C. Marshall, Secretary of State, at Harvard University on June 5, 1947 delivered at 2:50 PM to a capacity crowd of 15,000 in the Harvard Yard.

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• Audio Visual presentation of the speech
• Text of the Marshall Plan Speech  (From the State Department’s handout version of June 4, 1947)
• Text of the Marshall Plan Speech (From the recorded address)
• View the complete original copy of the speech as delivered by Secretary of State Marshall
  • Title Page
  • Page 1 - I need not tell you gentlemen that the world situation is very serious.
  • Page 2 - Recovery has been seriously retarded ...
  • Page 3 - ... the rehabilitation of the economic structure of Europe quite evidently will require a much longer time and greater effort than
    had been foreseen.
  • Page 4 - The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.
  • Page 5 - Our policy is directed not against any country or doctrine but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.
  • Page 6 - ... governments, political parties or groups which seek to perpetuate human misery in order to profit therefrom politically
    or otherwise will encounter the opposition of the United States.
  • Page 7 - The role of this country should consist of friendly aid in the drafting of a European program and of later support of such a program so far as it may be practical for us to do so.
    
    "[T]he capacity crowd of 15,000 showed up in the Yard not so much in expection of seeing history made, as simply in awe of the man."

• Read the story of the speech "Harvard Hears of the Marshall Plan" published in the May 4, 1962, The Crimson Review and letters from Marshall's escort, Harvard Law Professor E. M. Morgan , and Laird Bell , President of the Alumni Association, who selected Marshall as the speaker for the afternoon meeting of the Harvard Alumni Association.
• Press-relations officers at the University and the State Department advised reporters that the address as just " a routine commencement speech ... nothing of any importance ."
• Read also the Harvard Magazine article, " Ultimate Commencement Address "
  which asserts that the speech is "the most important Commencement address ever given at Harvard."