"On June 19, 1947, the British and French foreign ministers issued a joint communiqué inviting twenty-two European nations to send representatives to Paris to participate in designing a plan for rebuilding war-torn Europe. In his Harvard University commencement address two weeks earlier, U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall had called for a massive European aid package designed to stabilize the world economy and discourage the spread of communism. More than 12.4 billion dollars were transferred to Western Europe under the Economic Recovery Program known as the "Marshall Plan." Not completely altruistic, the legislation creating the plan specified that aid dollars be spent in the U.S"