Architects of the Marshall Plan meet at the White House in November 1948. From left: President Harry Truman; Secretary of State George Marshall; Paul G. Hoffman, head of the Economic Cooperation Administration, which was the Marshall Plan’s headquarters in Washington; and Ambassador W. Averell Harriman, the Marshall Plan’s coordinator for Europe, based in Paris.

Within the U.S. government, the Marshall Plan was a model in bipartisan cooperation. Plan administrator Hoffman was a lifelong Republican and senior auto-industry executive. White House staff members originally suggested naming the project the Truman Plan. The president refused, saying a plan bearing his name would never be approved by Congress. Instead, the plan was spearheaded by Marshall. A former Army chief of staff whose integrity was highly trusted by the American public, Marshall came from an era when senior Army officers chose not to vote in presidential elections in order to preserve their nonpartisan independence. Harriman, a business leader, lifelong Democrat and former ambassador to the Soviet Union and Great Britain, viewed the Marshall Plan as a strategic tool against Soviet expansion. (Library of Congress)