THE MARSHALL PLAN Japan. One of these five, the Soviet Union, was in hostile hands; the U.S. must ensure that no others fell to the Soviets.28 Kennan saw the ERP as an instrument of Soviet containment. The success of containment depended on building trust in the democratic leadership of Western Europe. It was essential to strengthen not only France and Britain but also the three western zones of occupied Germany-and to link them to the West.29 The possibility that all of Germany would instead become tied to the Soviet Union historian Melvyn Leffler refers to as "the strategic nightmare" of George C. Marshall and U.S. policy makers.30 In a secret telegram to the U.S. embassy in France, Marshall warned on February 19, 1948: "Unless Western Germany during coming year is effectively associated with Western European nations, first through economic arrangements, and ultimately perhaps in some political way, there is a real danger that whole of Germany will be drawn into Eastern orbit, with obvious dire consequences for all of us."31 Stalin condemned the Marshall Plan. Rebuilding Germany and moving it into the American sphere of influence was his worst dream.32 And he understood the threat of the plan to lure away his East European empire by linking its economies to the West and to the American global economic system. He could not countenance a scheme that would revive trade between Eastern and Western Europe and in the process deprive the Soviet Union of its newly created sphere of economic interest. Nor could he acquiesce in a process that would allow a supranational body to determine priorities and quotas for the Communist bloc. So he clamped down on Eastern Europe and ended the remaining coalition governments there.33 Hal Brands reminds us that the Marshall Plan was part of a moder nagejour nal .com 23http://www.modernagejournal.com