Just as the two major factions within the Soviet Union began to fight, the contradictions between the two camps of the East and the West were also getting bigger and bigger.

On June 5, 1947, U.S. Secretary of State George Marshall delivered a historic speech at Harvard's commencement ceremony.

Standing on the steps of the Harvard Campus Harvard_Yard Memorial Church at Harvard University, he proclaimed that the United States was ready to help Europe rebuild and express its willingness to provide substantial assistance to European countries to help Europe rebuild and develop its economy.

The speech, drafted by Charles Boren (Charles_Bohlen), did not mention any details or figures, but it made clear the purpose of the U.S. government — to bring together people from the free nations of Europe to plan a reconstruction of Europe with U.S. financial assistance.

Because the target of the plan was not the Americans, but the Europeans, the US government did not invite American journalists to attend the speech. At the same time, US President Harry S. Truman held a press conference in another place, which successfully diverted the attention of American journalists, so the speech was not widely reported by the American media.

On the other hand, the US government desperately contacted the media in various capitalist countries in Europe and asked them to report on the matter. The British BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) even broadcast the full text of this speech, bringing great "good news" to the British people who have been hit hard by the economy.

The BBC broadcast soon reached the ears of British Foreign Secretary Ernest Bevan, who was shaken by the good news and immediately got in touch with French Foreign Minister Georges Bidau (Georges_Bidault).

The British and French foreign ministers quickly got in touch and exchanged views on the U.S. aid program. Both sides considered it necessary to invite the USSR, an important ally of the anti-fascist war, to participate in the program (since a direct refusal of the USSR to participate in the aid program meant open distrust of the allies).

In Marshall's speech, he also "very frankly" invited the Soviet Union to join the Marshall Plan in order to receive American aid, so the United States, Britain, and France still supported the Soviet Union's participation in the aid program for the time being, at least on the surface.

But in reality, both the American, British, and French officials knew very well that it was impossible to provide any assistance to the Soviet Union, because it would be completely undesirable for Western countries, and at the same time it would strengthen the strength of Soviet communism, which was no different from raising a tiger.

Even if the U.S. government had agreed to aid the Soviet Union, the U.S. Congress, which represented the interests of the bourgeoisie, would never have approved a plan to aid the Soviet Union, so inviting the Soviet Union to participate in the aid program was only a superficial effort to whet Stalin's appetite.

When Stalin learned that the United States was going to provide aid to the Soviet Union, he immediately showed a "cautious interest" in the aid program. He believed that the Soviet Union was in a very favorable international environment after the war, so it would be okay to accept some acceptable aid, anyway.

So he sent Molotov, then Soviet Foreign Minister, to Paris to meet with the foreign ministers of Britain and France, but because Britain and France had understood that the United States did not want the Soviet Union to join the aid program, they put forward many conditions that were unacceptable to the Soviet Union, and the negotiation process did not go smoothly.

The most important condition put forward by the foreign ministers of Britain and France is that any country receiving aid will inevitably lose some of its economic sovereignty. At the same time, the foreign ministers of Britain and France also insisted that the aided countries must incidentally participate in the construction of a unified European market and develop a market economy, which was obviously incompatible with the highly centralized planned economic system of the Soviet Union and was tantamount to putting the Soviet Union on the road of revisionism in the market economy.

In the end, Molotov categorically rejected this harsh aid package and left Paris.

The French Socialist government, after receiving economic and military aid from the United States, was supported by the United States and no longer worried about the pressure of the Soviet Union, so it announced that it would exclude the French Communist Party from the government, and actively prepared for war against Vietnam, launching an attack on the Viet Minh in the communist camp in less than two months, completely tearing its face with the Soviet Union.

In fact, long before Marshall's aid, the French Socialist Party was already not on the right path with the Communist Party. At that time, more than 30,000 workers at the largest Renault factory in France went on strike, and were supported by the French Communist Party, demanding that the company improve the treatment of workers, but the Socialist government, which ostensibly represented the workers but actually represented the interests of the bourgeoisie, advocated the suppression of workers in order to protect the interests of the bourgeoisie.

However, because the Soviet Union was too powerful at the time, and the war-torn French state was too weak to compete with the Soviet Union, the Socialist government was so angry that it abandoned the idea of suppressing the strike.

Eventually, the workers' demands were fulfilled with the support of the French Communist Party, which gained a lot of fame for the French Communist Party, which gained more moral support from the French people, but also aroused the fear of the other parties in the ruling coalition.

It was not until France received economic and military assistance from the United States that the coalition government gained some confidence in confronting the Soviet Union, so it was driven by huge political interests, on the grounds of political disagreement, expelled the French Communist Party from the coalition government, and began to prepare for the war against Vietnam in order to gain colonial control over the whole of Vietnam and continue to follow the path of imperialism.

On the American side, President Truman also delivered his State of the Union address, emphasizing that "free people are resisting the conquest intentions of a few armed or foreign forces, and American policy must support them." Totalitarianism (in this case, the Soviet Union and other communist regimes) engulfs free people and poses a threat to international peace and U.S. national security.

In order to achieve his goal and prevent the expansion of communist forces, the Truman administration included Turkey, southern Italy, and Iran in the list of large-scale economic aid programs, and asked Congress to provide these countries with an initial aid of 800 million yuan, so that the bourgeois governments of these countries could use the money to develop their economies and win the hearts and minds of the people, expand their armaments, prevent the local communist forces from gaining more popular bases, and at the same time give the bourgeois governments enough to suppress potential communist movements.

Truman's proposition has set a precedent for the United States to assist anti-communist regimes around the world, and no matter how undemocratic these regimes are and how many "human rights" violations they do, as long as their stance is anti-communist, they will be supported by the United States.

Thus, a global military alliance against the Soviet Union was gradually established.