Lot 122, Box 13113
Memorandum by the Director of the Policy Planning Staff (Kennan) to the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs (Thorp)
The Policy Planning Staff will require, in connection with its examination of the problems of European reconstruction, a series of brief background studies relating to certain important items of European economy. These are the items which may constitute the basis of the functional approach to problems of European recovery, now under discussion in many quarters of Europe.
The fields of European economy which I have in mind in this connection are the following:
- Coal
- Electric power
- Steel
- Agriculture
- Food
- Inland transport
- Shipping and shipbuilding
You may think of others which should be included. The principal criterion in my mind is that they should be fields of activity which might be supposed to have key significance in Europe’s recovery and ones which would lend themselves to treatment on an overall European basis rather than a national basis.1
Since it is impossible to draw up any common set of terms of reference for these studies, I enclose individual papers2 on each of the items mentioned setting forth the points in which I am particularly interested. They will serve at least to reveal the nature of the inquiry. The persons preparing the study are welcome to add other items if they consider them pertinent to the general purpose of the inquiry.
These studies need not be exhaustive. We merely want the main outlines of the facts which bear on the situation. I am afraid that we will need the completed studies at a very early date if they are to be useful in the work which the Planning Staff now has in hand. They should, if possible, be completed by the Fourth of July weekend or, if that is simply not possible in certain instances, by July 15. But we would prefer to have brief skeleton surveys at an early date rather than long and detailed studies later. If questions of priority are involved, I am sure that Mr. Lovett will agree with me on the [Page 268] overriding importance of getting into the Secretary’s hands at a very early date a workable study of the main elements of the European reconstruction problem and will be prepared to support any requests we may have to make of other people for rapid action on these inquiries.
I am addressing this request to you with the feeling that you will know better than I do what can be done in the sections of the Department under your supervision and what should be farmed out elsewhere in the Department and the Government. (Presumably the food study, for example, can be farmed out at once to Agriculture.) In general, there is a virtue in spreading responsibility for this type of study as widely as possible.
Many of the questions may look so naively broad as to horrify the scholarly economist. If so, tell your people to disregard their consciences, take a deep breath, and let us have their best guess.
- On the previous day, a Working Group on European Reconstruction, drawn from the offices responsible to the Assistant Secretary of State for Economic Affairs, met to consider “ways and means of implementing the European Reconstruction program”. (Memorandum of June 23 Meeting, Lot 122, Box 13113.)↩
- Enclosures not printed.↩