Roman Holiday. The Marshall Plan, American tourism to Rome, and the creation of the West (1947-1957)

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Roman Holiday. The Marshall Plan, American

tourism to Rome, and the creation of the West

(1947-1957)

Research Master Thesis in History University of Amsterdam

July 2018 Aimée Plukker Supervisor: dr. N. Scholz

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The light splintered and the hills and houses were rainbow-edged, as though a prism had been placed in front of his eyes. The prism was tears. Some anonymous ancestor, preserved in this bloodstream of assigned to cramped quarters somewhere in the accumulation of inherited identities that went by his name, had suddenly taken over; somebody looking out of the porthole of a ship on a July morning and recognizing certain characteristic features of his homeland, of a place that is Europe and not America, wept all he did not know he remembered.

William Maxwell, The Château (1961)

Rome is everybody’s memory, as it was a hundred or a thousand years ago; the thing now is to find a way into it.

Eleanor Clark, Rome and a Villa (1950)

While stands the Coliseum, Rome shall stand; When falls the Coliseum, Rome shall fall; And when Rome falls – the World.

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Introduction

Today we are fighting in a country which has contributed a great deal to our cultural inheritance. A country rich in monuments which by their creation helped, and now in their old age illustrate, the growth of the civilization which is ours. We are bound to respect those monuments so far as war allows.1

For Rome is ours. It is not just the capital of United Italy (…) it is the capital of what we are pleased to call Western civilization.2

After the Second World War, Rome was of significant symbolic importance in redefining the relation between the United States and Europe. During the post-war period not only major shifts in economic and political relations took place, but also concerning more general ideas about what Europe and the United States were supposed to be. Tourism functioned in this early Cold War period as an important tool of ‘consumer diplomacy’. Tourism and travel development were key components of the Marshall Plan (officially the European Recovery Program (ERP), 1948-1952). By stimulating travel to Europe, American policy makers incited American tourists to bring indispensable dollars to Europe to fill the ‘dollar gap’, at the same time enforcing the idea that Americans were caretakers of Western civilisation. American tourism to Rome played a vital role in this negotiation of creating new, post-war identities.

In this thesis I will analyse how a specific idea of Western civilisation was created in the context of the Marshall Plan through the lens of tourism. How did American tourism to Rome contribute to the idea of ‘the West’ after the Second World War? Using a wide range of sources, I will answer this question by focusing on three different aspects: the Marshall Plan as a framework of political and institutional interaction, the Italian perspective and lastly, the American perspective as it took shape in different publications, including film. In these three domains, ideas about both Europe and the United States will be explored. In the chapter concentrating on

1_{Letter by Eisenhower, written on the 29th of December 1943, cited in a guidebook. Mary Clara}

Laughlin and Betty Laughlin Sweeney, So You’re Going to Italy! (Cambridge, MA 1950; rewritten from Clara E Laughlin ’25, ’28, ’34 and ’37 edition), xxvii.

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the Marshall Plan these ideas will be analysed from an economic, political and institutional angle, in the chapters on Italian and American views this analysis will be carried out from a cultural angle. The point of departure with regard to my research is 1947, when the Marshall Plan was initiated, and ends in 1957, the year in which the Treaty of Rome was signed, establishing the European Economic Community. My thesis shall provide insight in this crucial phase in the history of European tourism, contributing to a deeper understanding of transatlantic relations and the shaping of the idea of the West.

The post-war period saw a significant growth and democratisation of international travel, which became one of the world’s leading industries. New technologies, often a product of the war effort, allowed individuals to move more cheaply than in the past.3

Technological advances in commercial aviation for example played a critical role, just like rising living standards. More people could buy consumer goods, and travelling was a part of this.4_{In the post-war years, travel was also fundamental to the politics}

of internationalism. In the recently published Backpack Ambassadors, Richard Ivan Jobs studies youth travel in Europe, a new phenomenon unique to the post-war period. Jobs shows how international reconciliation was developed from the bottom up, demonstrating that the rise of international youth culture and the rise of mass tourism were intertwined phenomena of post-war consumer capitalism. In his work it becomes clear how the practice of youth travel and the creation of a transnational youth culture developed outside political and governmental institutions.5

Although Jobs’ work is an important history of personal, touristic experiences of post-war youth tourism in Europe, exploring the influence of institutions and political forces is also essential to understand the post-war politics of internationalism in tourism. Governments and institutions played an important role in the post-war tourism industry contributing to the construction of the idea of the West. Therefore, I will focus on the dialogue between politics and culture in the creation of post-war identities through tourism. As Patrick Jackson has shown in his

3_{Foster Rhea Dulles, Americans Abroad. Two centuries of European Travel (Michigan 1964), 169 and}

Eric Zuelow, A history of modern tourism (London 2016), 150. See also Patrizia Battilani, Vacanze di

pochi vacanze di tutti. L’evoluzione del turismo europeo (Bologna 2001) and Annuziata

Berrino, Storia del turismo in Italia (Bologna 2011).

4_{Zuelow, A history of modern tourism, 155 and 159-160.}

5_{Richard Ivan Jobs, Backpack Ambassadors. How Youth Travel Integrated Europe (Chicago and}

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work Civilizing the Enemy. German Reconstruction and the Invention of the West, the notion of the West was used politically and was consciously spread after the Second World War. Within this process the term Western civilisation was established as a rhetorical commonplace.6_{In order to further shed light on this process, I shall}

focus on the creation of this rhetorical commonplace in the tourism industry, for which the context of the Marshall Plan is essential.

Most of the research in the new field of tourism history almost exclusively focuses on France when it comes to the role of the Marshall Plan in post-war tourism promotion and its function in consumer diplomacy.7_{In Cold War Holidays,}

Christopher Endy emphasises post-war tourism as an economic and political instrument of consumer diplomacy during the Cold War. In these post-war years, tourism was still, or even more than in the period before the Second World War, linked to international politics. Anne Gorsuch has also studied the political use of tourism in the early post-war period.8_{She describes how the Soviet regime also}

understood American tourism as a political tool, suggesting in 1951 ‘that the United States was preparing a new world war via tourism to Western Europe’.9_With

propagating tourism as ‘soft power’ during the Cold War, tourism as commodity emphasised the ‘good life’ of consumerism and leisure to demonstrate the capitalist

6_{Patrick Thaddeus Jackson, Civilizing the Enemy. German Reconstruction and the Invention of the}

West (Michigan 2006).

7_{See Christopher Endy, Cold War Holidays: American Tourism in France (Chapel Hill 2004). In}

Brian McKenzie’s Remaking France, a chapter is dedicated to trans-Atlantic tourism and the Marshall Plan. See Brian A. McKenzie, ‘The Marshall Plan and Transatlantic tourism’ in: Remaking France.

Americanization, Public Diplomacy and the Marshall Plan (Oxford 2005). For other research on

American tourism and the Marshall Plan outside France, see for instance the work of Grant on Britain and the work of de la Bruhèze on the Netherlands. Mariel Grant, ‘“Working for the Yankee Dollar”: Tourism and the Festival of Britain as Stimuli for recovery’, Journal of British Studies 45 (July 2006), 581-601 and Adri A. Albert de la Bruhèze, ‘Confronting the Lure of American Tourism: Modern Accommodation in the Netherlands’, in: Thomas Kaiserfeld and Per Lundin (ed.), The making of

European Consumption: Facing the American Challange (New York 2015), 157-177. For more

research on post-war American tourism to France, see the work of Levenstein. As we can read in Levenstein, cultural self-improvement gave travelling through Europe still social status in the 1950s and 1960s. See Harvey A. Levenstein, We’ll always have Paris. American tourists in France since

1930 (Chicago 2004). Further contributions on the development of tourism in the context of the

Marshall Plan are for instance, Günter Bischof, ‘“Conquering the Foreigner”: The Marshall Plan and the Revival of Postwar Austrian Tourism’ in: Günter Bischof, Anton Pelinka and Dieter Stiefel, The

Marshall Plan in Austria (New Brunswick and London 2000), 357-401 and Stavros Alifragkis and

Emilia Athanassiou, ‘Educating Greece in modernity: post-war tourism and Western politics’, The

Journal of Architecture, 18:5 (2013), 699-720.

8_{Anne E. Gorsuch, All this is your world. Soviet tourism at home and abroad after Stalin (Oxford}

2011).

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West’s superiority, as has also been described by Shelley Baranowski and Ellen Furlough.10

The Marshall Plan deployed tourism as a way to propagate American ideals of modernisation and of the consumer citizen. My research should be viewed in the context of this Marshall Plan ideology that is closely intertwined with historical debates concerning ‘Americanisation’, ‘modernisation’ and more broadly, the rise of consumer society. Travel was not only becoming a commodity that people could (and should) buy in their free time; the whole tourism industry became modernised from the 1930s onwards, as part of the change to mass consumption in Europe.11_{In this}

process consumption also became politicised, mostly through the relationship between consumer and citizen.12

The historiography on the nature of these changing consumption regimes in Europe is extensive. One of the most influential works within this debate is Victoria de Grazia’s Irresistible Empire.13_{In this work de Grazia states that during the course}

of the 20th_{century the United States actively propagated a ‘Market Empire’ in}

Europe, thereby changing European consumption regimes, especially after the Second World War. According to De Grazia, the Market Empire circulated a consumer democracy, thereby reconstructing the European commercial civilisation and bringing a new transatlantic dialectic fostered by the United States’ consumer revolution, a process in which Europe needed to be united.14

Several scholars have debated this dialectic as a process of Americanisation, discussing to what extent the American model was hegemonic in its influence on

10_{Shelley Baranowski, and Ellen Furlough, Being elsewhere. Tourism, consumer culture, and identity}

in Modern Europe and North America (Michigan 2001), 17. Another interesting work on the

relationship between tourism and international relations is the work of Neal Rosendorf on how Franco viewed and used tourism in the internal sphere: Rosendorf, Neal M., Franco sells Spain to America.

Hollywood, tourism and public relation as postwar Spanish soft power (London 2014).

11_{Victoria de Grazia, ‘Changing Consumption Regimes in Europe, 1930-1970. Comparative}

Perspectives on the Distribution Problem’ in: Susan Strasser, Charles McGovern and Matthias Judt,

Getting and Spending. European and American Consumer Societies in the Twentieth Century

(Cambridge 1998), 59-83. For more information on tourism as mode of consumption, see for example: Rudy Koshar (ed.), Histories of leisure (Oxford 2002), introduction and Orvar Löfgren, On holiday. A

history of vacationing (Berkeley 1999).

12_{Sheryl Kroen, ‘A politcal history of the consumer’, The Historical Journal, 47, 3 (2004), pp. 709-736,}

709.

13_{Victoria de Grazia, Irresistible Empire: America’s Advance through Twentieth-Century Europe}

(Cambridge, Mass. 2005).

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Europe.15_{Already in 1994 Reinhold Wagnleiter studied Americanisation in an}

Austrian context. 16 _{He describes Americanisation as a process of cultural}

transformation, strongly influenced by capitalism and consumerism. According to Wagnleiter, this process was more an actual Europeanisation of the world than a one-way American influence.17_{Heide Fehrenbach and Uta Poiger placed Americanisation}

in the context of modernity, stating that it should be used more as a descriptive term: they define Americanisation as a transfer of goods and symbols from the United States to other countries in which these influences are transformed.18_{Mel van Elteren}

defined Americanisation as more complex than cultural imperialism. 19

Americanisation should be considered as a process within a specific historical context that also unfolds outside the cultural sphere: local appropriation and processing of American influences should thus be related to projections of American power internationally, such as economic policies, international politics and security. The importance of American power relations beyond the cultural sphere also shapes the background of my research, especially in the first chapter on the travel section of the Marshall Plan from an economic, political and institutional angle.

Mary Nolan recently described how ‘Americanisation was (and is) shaped by the images and discourses that present the United States as a – if not the – sterling example of economic, social, and cultural modernity’.20_{Americanisation fostered}

15_{Philipp Gassert described Americanisation as a process from above and below. According to Gassert,}

Americanisation from above is ‘a specific set of policies linked to the US acquiring hegemonic status within the Western world beginning in the 1940s and lasting into the 1960s.’ Americanisation from below is a much broader phenomenon and contains for example the appreciation of American products, for example in the 1950s and 1960s when young Europeans had the means and leisure time to acquire American products. See Philipp Gassert, ‘The spectre of Americanization: Western Europe in the American Century’, The Oxford Handbook of Postwar European History (Oxford University Press 2012). For more literature on Americanisation see for instance David Ellwood, The Shock of

America: Europe and the Challenge of the Century (Oxford 2012), Rob Kroes, If you’ve seen one, you’ve seen the mall: Europeans and American Mass Culture (Urbana 1996), Richard Kuisel, Seducing the French. The dilemma of Americanization (Berkeley, Los Angeles and London 1993;

1996), Ruth Oldenziel, ‘Is Globalization a code word for Americanization? Contemplating McDonalds, Coca-Cola, and military bases’, TSEG 4 (2007) 3, 83-106 and Richard Pells, Not like US: How

Europeans have love, hated, and transformed American culture since World War II (New York

1998).

16_{Reinhold Wagnleiter, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War. The cultural mission of the United}

States in Austria after the Second World War (Chapel Hill 1994).

17_{Wagnleiter, Coca-Colonization and the Cold War, 1-3 and 6-7.}

18_{Heide Fehrenbach and Uta G. Poiger, Americanization reconsidered. Introduction’, in: Fehrenbach,}

Poiger (eds.), Transactions, transgressions, transformations. American culture in Western Europe

and Japan (Berghahn 2000), xiii-xl, xiii-xiv.

19_{Mel van Elteren, Rethinking americanization abroad. Toward a critical alternative to prevailing}

paradigms, in: Journal of American culture 29 (2006) 3, 345-367, 346 and 359.

20_{Mary Nolan, ‘Negotiationg American Modernity in Twentieth-Century Europe’ in: Thomas}

Kaiserfeld and Per Lundin (ed.), The making of European Consumption: Facing the American

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concrete images and practices that Europeans used to debate modernity. According to Nolan: ‘Europeans debated, negotiated with, and altered the economic and cultural forms and norms that the United States established – and often sought to impose’, leading to hybrid values, products and processes in Europe. 21_{Other than what De}

Grazia argued, there was not a singular American regime of mass consumption that replaced a singular bourgeois European consumption regime; in the case of De Grazia’s work for example from a Fordist to a post-Fordist mode. The ‘complex circulation of cultural norms, economic models, goods and people’ that existed in Europe, resulted in co-existing consumer regimes in Europe and post-war hybrid models of modernity rather than the triumph of one American model.22_{My research}

will provide insight in this negotiation of economic and cultural forms and norms defined by the United States by analysing the concrete images concerning American and European identities as propagated through American tourism to Rome. Similarities and differences between several post-war perspectives and their relationship with the period before the war will provide a deeper understanding of this negotiation of consumption regimes, linked to notions of democracy and the West.

Sheryl Kroen has shown that De Grazia’s positive conception of consumerism as linked to democracy only came to prevail after the Second World War, in what Lizabeth Cohen calls the Consumer’s Republic.23_{The political history of the}

consumer that Kroen proposes ‘looks at the ways in which modern political ideologies and movements imagined, theorized, or directly involved consumers, or responded to problems or opportunities related to consumerism and its consequences’.24_The

post-war transformation in attitudes topost-wards consumption and the ‘consumer citizen’ took place in the context of the Marshall Plan: ‘the Marshall Plan and its implementation in Europe offers a particularly rich framework within which to assess competing conceptions and practices linking citizenship to consumerism in the post-war period’.25

In my research I shall highlight this transformation in attitudes towards consumption in the context of the Marshall Plan and how this transformation relates

21_{Mary Nolan, ‘Negotiationg American Modernity in Twentieth-Century Europe’, 18.} 22_{Per Lundin (ed.), The making of European Consumption, 2 and 18.}

23_{Lizabeth Cohen, A Consumer’s Republic. The Politics of Mass Consumption in Postwar America}

(New York 2003) and Kroen, ‘A politcal history of the consumer’, 709.

24_{Kroen, ‘A politcal history of the consumer’, 710.} 25_{Ibid., 732.}

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to the creation of post-war identities in the new political world order: a transformation in which the commonplace of Western civilisation was created through tourism in the ideological and political context of the Marshall Plan. Within the Marshall Plan, American tourism to Europe played an important role, not just economically, but also politically and culturally. In the following I will argue by providing a short history of American travel to Europe and Rome, why the case study of American tourism to Rome is so important for studying how the idea of the West was created in the post-war years.

The idea and ‘greater traditions’ of the ‘Old World’ - Europe as a cultural entity - attracted many Americans to travel to Europe, especially since the nineteenth century. Already in 1856 an article in the North American Review stated that: ‘Americans have a special call to travel. It is a peculiar privilege of their birth in the New World, that the Old World is left them to visit.’26_{Americans visited Europe as}

‘an act of re-discovering and re-possessing one’s heritage.’27_{According to William}

Stowe, Americans in the nineteenth century used travelling to Europe to construct and claim identities, variously defined by gender, class, race and nationality.28_The

topoi of the Old World and Europe as timeless civilisation became a way to form the

cultural justification for an alliance between Europe and the United States during the post-war period.29_{Endy also describes this ideal to create an Atlantic Community via}

tourism after the Second World War, although in practice motives and experiences of tourists were more complex.30

As the supposed capital concerning the idea of Europe as a cultural entity, Rome played a vital symbolic role. This was partly embedded in the long tradition of travel to Rome. Rome had been a tourist destination for centuries, especially starting

26_{Cited in: Dulles, Americans Abroad, opening first chapter.}

27_{Philip Rahv, Discovery of Europe. The story of American Experience in the Old World (Boston}

1947), xviii.

28_{Stowe further explains that ‘travel and travel writing provided nineteenth-century Americans with}

broad, but not unbounded fields for the creation and the performance of personal and social meaning; experiment with alternate identities and construct tentative and serious systems of belief and structures of commitment’. See William Stowe, Going Abroad (Princeton 1994), xi and 73.

29_{Endy, Cold War Holidays, 104.}

30_{Ibid., 101. For more information about the creation of an Atlantic identity and community after the}

war see for instance, Frank Costigliola, ‘Culture, Emotion, and the Creation of the Atlantic Identity, 1948-1952’ in: Geir Lundestad (ed.), No End to Alliance. The United States and Western Europe: Past,

Present and Future, 21-36 and David Ellwood, ‘What Winning Stories Teach. The Marshall Plan and

Atlanticism as Enduring Narratives’ in: Marco Mariano (ed.), Defining the Atlantic Community. Culture, Intellectuals, and Policies in the Mid-Twentieth Century (New York and London 2010), 111-131.

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with the Grand Tour in the seventeenth century.31_{The many visitors to Rome not}

only left their traces in the city itself, but also contributed to create an imaginary Rome, defining Rome as an important place of pilgrimage, secular as well as religious.32_{The vast amount of paintings, travel writing and souvenirs that were}

created in the last centuries show the rich tradition of travelling to Rome in which Rome was defined as the Eternal City and became a cultural symbol of Western civilisation.

Although nowadays the concept of the West and Western Civilisation seems self-evident, the idea of the West and its attached cultural, political and geographical notions, took shape only in the twentieth century, and especially after the Second World War.33_{The intellectual debate on the West started at the beginning of the}

twentieth century. One example of a publication within this debate is Oswald Spengler’s The Decline of the West (1918-1922) in which he described the decline of Western or American-European civilisation.34_{It was only after the Second World}

War that the idea of the West took shape on a broader level, culturally as well as politically, in the context of the Cold War.35_{A good example of this is a series of}

articles titled ‘The History of Western Culture’ in Life magazine. This series was simultaneously developed with history courses at American universities in surveys of Western civilisation. In the announcement of the series from 1947 the urgency to understand Western civilisation is underscored:

‘Modern Western man is not so confident. Standing uncertain of his place in history, he does not know where he and his world are going. But if he does not know where he is going, Western man can at least look back and see where he came from. (…) Americans need perspective on their past so they can determine their future. (….) they

31_{See for an overview of Rome as tourist destination Matthew Sturgis, When in Rome. 2000 years of}

Roman Sightseeing (London 2011).

32_{See for more literature on this process for Rome (and Italy) the work of Hom: Stephanie Malia Hom,}

‘Consuming the View: Tourism, Rome, and the Topos of the Eternal City’, Annali d’Italianistica 28 (2010), Capital City: Rome (1870 2010), 91-116 and Stephanie Malia Hom, The beautiful country.

Tourism and the impossible state to destination Italy (Toronto 2015).

33_{A quick look on Google Ngram shows that ‘Western Civilization’ is used in publications since 1860}

and is more often used since 1900, with a peak of references from 1944 onwards. However, ‘the West’ and ‘Rome’ are only very often used from 1947 onwards. All three terms show a decline in references during the 1960s.

34_{Oswald Spengler, Helmut Wener, Arthur Helps, and Charles F. Atikinson, The Decline of the West}

(New York 1991).

35_{For more literature on the construction of the West see for example: Alistair Bonnett, The idea of the}

West: Culture, Politics and History (Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire 2004) and James G.

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have now the opportunity to preserve and develop the culture which they have inherited and which has in it so much greatness and beauty.’36

In this quote not only the need to define the West is shown, but it also becomes clear how Americans perceived themselves as heirs to a particular Western culture, for which they looked at European history, such as classical Greece and Rome.37

Furthermore, in the series of ten articles, seven out of ten include references to Rome.38

Americans considered Rome not only a birthplace of their cultural, but also of their political traditions.39_{‘Eternal Rome’ as symbolic for a deep historical structure}

representing the oldest European model of empire and civilisation, resulting in what Peter Bondanella has described as the myth of Rome as ‘a fundamental psychical entity for Western civilization’.40_{Referring to the possibility of the state’s perpetual}

security in Roman times, the Eternal Rome signified supreme spiritual and imperial power during the middle ages. In the 19th_{century variations on the theme of Rome as}

eternal increased, due to the romantic writers, partly derived from the classical knowledge of that time.41_{According to Kenneth Pratt, writing in 1965, in this period}

the eternal became also applicable to many non-theological objects and ‘having become more plastic, “eternal” as applied to Rome included a sense of awe that the city with its impressive visual and historical elements had survived for so many centuries.’42

During the fascist period in Italy, the eternal Rome was presented as an epiphenomenon of fascism, whose leaders defined Rome as city of the future.43_Pratt

concludes that the concept of the eternal Rome kept alive a claim of exclusiveness,

36_{‘Life announces a series of articles on The History of Western Culture’, Life magazine March 3}

(1947), 69.

37_{‘Our modern Western civilization, which owes much to classical Greece and Rome, had its roots in}

the Middle Ages and grew most directly out of the Renaissance’ in: ‘Life announces a series of articles’,

Life magazine.

38_{For example: ‘Rome, spiritual center of medieval Europe’ and ‘debris of fallen Rome’ in ‘Medieval}

Life’, Life magazine May 26 (1947), 65 and ‘The Age of Enlightenment’, Life magazine September 15 (1947). In one of the seven references is referred to the Roman Catholic Church.

39_{For more about this topic in American travel writing see Anne Wingenter, ‘’Eternal City, Sawdust}

Caesar’: Americans on Tour in Post WWII Rome (1944-1960)’, Annali d’Italianistica, vol. 28 (2010), 317-340.

40_{Peter Bondanella, The Eternal City. Roman images in the modern world (Chapel Hill and London}

1987), 7.

41_{Kenneth J. Pratt, ‘Rome as Eternal’, Journal of the History of Ideas vol. 16 no. 1 (1965), 25-44, 26,}

34 and 39.

42_{Pratt, ‘Rome as Eternal’, 39.} 43_{Ibid., 41-43.}

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‘aided by the many foreigners who sense or know the cultural and human wealth of the city.’44_{The longevity of this specific conceptualisation and its long drift through}

the centuries demonstrates its logic or at least its utility in the historical area of the human emotions.45_{After the war, Americans actively combined the myth of the}

eternal Rome with the idea of the Old World, giving shape to a renewed idea of Western civilisation. Within this process, Americans applied older traditions of projecting one’s heritage in historical Europe and Rome as important tourist destination for both American and European travellers.46_{Consequently, analysing}

American post-war tourism to Rome is essential to understand the transformation in political and cultural transatlantic relations, and the accompanying reconceptualisation of the idea of the West.

In the first chapter of my thesis I will show how by applying the Marshall Plan narrative of modernisation - described by David Ellwood as an introduction of ‘the concept, the language, and the techniques of economic growth to European political culture’ - to post-war tourism development, a specific context was created in which new ideas about Europe and the United States took shape and how these ideas were spread.47_{Several archival sources concerning Marshall Plan tourism policy shall be}

analysed, such as Italian-American correspondence and documents from the European Travel Commission (ETC), an organisation composed of representatives of the official travel organisations of ERP-countries, which was officially recognised as the advisory body on travel development by the Organisation for European Economic Cooperation (OEEC). This analysis will provide a wider economic and political framework in which the need to define the idea of the West can be explained, also placing the focus on American tourism to Rome in the second and third chapter in this wider context.

In the second chapter I will research the Italian perspective on American tourism to Rome by a thorough examination of Italian promotional material in the form of tourism promotional magazines. How do underlying ideas about the political use of travel and the existence of a Western identity and Western civilisation appear? I will show how the goals of the Marshall Plan became visible regarding Italy and

44_{Ibid., 44.}

45_{Even despite the fact that Pratt says that ‘The theme of Rome spoken of as eternal is a study of the}

irrational, the unreasonable sometimes rationalized, never convincing upon analysis.’ Ibid.

46_{Rahv, Discovery of Europe, xiii.}

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Rome by discussing several recurring themes: rhetoric in which cooperation and friendship are central elements, a technological-modern standard in tourism facilities, Rome as a symbol of modernity, and lastly the representation of Rome as a central place of international entertainment. By focusing on these themes, I will demonstrate how in promotional magazines tourism to Rome was reframed in the context of the Marshall Plan.

The third chapter focuses on the American perspective through a close reading of the influential American film Roman Holiday (1953), complemented with other sources, such as American travel writing and guidebooks. I will explain how this film created a dichotomy between an ‘old’ Europe and ‘new’ America and thus presented a specific vision on the role of the United States and Europe within the construction of post-war identities and politics, contributing to the idea of the West. How are European and American identities presented in Roman Holiday and are these different from the ones in the discussed Italian tourism promotional magazines from the second chapter? How does the Marshall Plan context become visible in this specific American representation of touristic Rome? I will answer these questions by discussing how the United States, Europe and the idea of Western civilisation are displayed in Roman Holiday, with a focus on the touristic, consumerist experience and the representation of Rome.

The combination of the different perspectives and wide range of sources will provide a deeper understanding of the dialogue between politics and culture in the creation of post-war identities through tourism. This process shall also be placed in the context of long-term cultural developments and tourist infrastructure before the war, thereby contributing to the multiple debates concerning consumerism, the political use of tourism and post-war American hegemony in Europe. A better knowledge of the impact of the Marshall Plan on the post-war history of European tourism, and its role in cultural diplomacy and early European cooperation will be offered, adding to a reconceptualisation of the idea of the West. My thesis will demonstrate how in the context of the Marshall Plan the reframing of American tourism to Rome created specific identities that gave new meaning to the commonplace of Western civilisation.

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Chapter 1 - How to get the American travel dollar

The Marshall Plan perspective: reconstructing the Italian tourism industry

Italy must be more aggressive to reach the competitive American market of 1951 and thereafter. It must do so in 1950 (…) if it is to assure that the 1/6 of the population of Italy which is directly or indirectly employed in its tourist industry gets its rightful share of American dollars.48

Herbert Wilkinson, head of the American Travel Branch of the Department of Commerce

After the Second World War, tourism was promoted as one of the most important industries to aid in the recovery of a war-torn Europe. Attracting American tourists to Europe was seen as an easy method to get dollars to Europe in order to fill the so-called ‘dollar-gap’.49_{Tourism would bring economic prosperity, which was essential}

in enhancing peace and a central element of the Marshall Plan (1948-1952). Travel development and tourism played a significant role in the Marshall Plan, not only because of its economic benefits, but also because of the symbolic cultural and historical meaning attributed to Europe. Tourism thus helped define new political relations between the United States and Europe. As early as 1947 the first initiatives were taken to stimulate the tourism industry in Europe, mostly fostered from American interests and companies, such as American Express.

This chapter will show how, through the post-war development of American tourism to Europe, which was by the Marshall Plan, a specific context was created in which new ideas about Europe and the United States took shape and how these ideas were spread. Focussing on American tourism to Rome and Italy, my analysis of its main institutions, protagonists, publications and Italian-American correspondence, makes clear that a complex mixture of forces were at stake: national (American and Italian) governments, local policies, American and Italian companies from the

48_{Herbert Wilkinson, ‘Why the Italian Tourist Office in the United States Should Have an Adequate}

Appropriation’, memorandum written on 11 January 1950 in: Archivio Storico Diplomatico (in next note: ASD) Rome, Piano Marshall (in next note: MP), Busta 16 2)turismo.

49_{Tourism was presented as a way to fix the trade and currency deficits in Western Europe, since}

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tourism industry and European tourism organisations. The economic and political framework provided in this chapter is necessary to understand how a context was created in which the need to define the idea of the West was developed. I will demonstrate this through a focus on two major themes: the negotiations on the implementation of ‘American’ models in this post-war period, especially concerning the development of tourist facilities and advertising. Insight in these negotiations will also lead to a better understanding of the importance of analysing both tourism promotional material (chapter 2) and Roman Holiday (chapter 3) in studying how American tourism to Rome contributed to the idea of the West.

Furthermore, this chapter will demonstrate the strong post-war relation between politics and tourism, and the multiple forms of American hegemony that can be found within this relation. Although there were different interests on both the American and the Italian side, the United States continuously presented itself as the expert in implementing measures that were meant to develop the Italian and European tourism industry, thereby propagating American ideals of modernisation and consumption. This post-war negotiation of the development of tourism cannot be researched without the political aim of the Marshall Plan in mind. At first sight the aim of stimulating American tourism to Europe was economic development, but the studied sources in this chapter also give insight in the importance of ideas about American and European identities. These identities promoted freedom and peace through economic prosperity, and the creation of a new political world order. This institutional, political and economic dialogue concerning the development of post-war tourism is essential in understanding how the (symbolic) West took shape after the Second World War.

The sources used in this chapter are mostly derived from the archive for diplomatic history of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Rome. In this archive, I have explored documents concerning the Marshall Plan, tourism and economic affairs. The fact that these documents are found in the archive for diplomatic history shows that all the documents were used and discussed by Italian politicians, although not all documents were directly addressed to them, but for example sent to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs by the Italian embassy in the United States. I have tried to provide a concise and mostly chronological, overview, split up into four parts, of the post-war development dealing with stimulating American tourism to Europe and the Italian tourism industry more generally instead of Rome, since the sources in the archive of

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diplomatic history merely focused on Rome (but on Italy or Europe). In this chapter, I have concentrated on distinctive ideas on the United States, Europe and Italy, revealing how a specific context was created, mostly fostered by the Marshall Plan that was fundamental in defining the West. The context developed in this chapter will also be used in my second and third chapter, as I will place the focus on American tourism to Rome in this wider context.

I Before the implementation of the Marshall Plan

Italian initiatives to stimulate tourism

In April 1947 the New York Times wrote: ‘Italy is in no shape to receive guests’.50_The

Italian tourism industry certainly faced many problems related to the aftermath of the war, such as demolished roads, food shortages and difficulties related to money-exchange. Regardless, already in 1947 the Italian government and Italian and Roman organisations took measures to stimulate American tourism, mostly lead by pre-war tourism organisations and institutions, from which the two most important were the ENIT (Ente Nazionale Italiano per il Turismo) and the CIT (Compagnia Italiana

Turismo).51_{The ENIT was founded in 1919, as a response to the economic situation in}

Italy after the First World War. The CIT was the former commercial sector of the ENIT from which it separated in 1927. After the separation the ENIT and CIT became rivals.52_{During the war, the abroad ENIT offices abroad were closed, such as the}

ENIT office in New York, which had been closed since July 1941.53

Shortly after the war, the pwar tourist organisations were quickly re-established. An example of this development is a letter to the Italian Embassy in the United States by A. Morsbach, an American who worked for American Express in the 1920s and was later involved in the development of foreign travel. Already on the 22nd of October 1945 Morsbach wrote to the Italian government, asking if the CIT

50_{‘Tourists to Europe’, the New York Times, 14 April 1947 in: ASD, Direzione Generale Affari}

Economici (in next note: DGAE) A, Busta 247

51_{The ENIT is nowadays known as the Agenzia Nazionale del Turismo and the CIT was liquidated in}

bankruptcy copurt in 2008.

52_{Taina Syrjämaa, Visitez l'Italie: Italian State Tourism Propaganda Abroad, 1914-1943 (Turku}

1997), 10 and 347.

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was still intact and if he could be provided with a list of the officials of the company. Being frank about his concern in stimulating American tourism to Italy, he wrote: ‘I am anxious to contact this organisation in the interest of American travel to Italy as soon as passport restrictions are lifted’.54_{He went on to say that he was working on a}

plan for the general development of travel, which would be in the interest of the CIT.55

It is important to take into consideration that these pre-war tourist organisations mostly continued as they had before shortly after the war: in the context of the Marshall Plan many practices in the travel industry were presented as new, while in the case of Italy there were also some continuities. As Taina Syrjämaa has shown in her work Visitez L’Italie: Italian State Tourism Propaganda Abroad, 1914-1943, Italy had already invested huge sums in promoting tourism to attract foreigners to the Bel Paese before the Second World War.56_{Tourism became one of the most}

important parts of Italy’s national economy in the years before the war, compensating for an otherwise large foreign trade deficit. In the 1930s, the Italian tourist organisations were taken under the direct supervision of Mussolini: the state tried to

54_{A. Morsbach, letter to the commercial attache of the Italian Embassy, 22 October 1945 in: ASD,}

DGAE A, Busta 20.

55_Ibid.

56_{Syrjämaa, Visitez l'Italie, 9. It is important to notice here that Syrjämaa focuses on tourism}

promotion to all foreign countries outside Italy, while I focus on American tourism specifically.

Figure 1 and 2: The general direction of the CIT in Rome and inside the head office of the CIT in Rome, in: Travel in Italy, spring 1949, Biblioteca ENIT, Rome.

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achieve total control over the field of tourism, because of its importance to the national economy. Although the Second World War reduced tourism to almost nothing, the making of tourist propaganda and tourism planning for the future continued until the summer of 1943. According to Syrjämaa the practical realisation of tourist propaganda ceased when the fascist Ministry of Popular Culture and its subordinate organ ENIT were forced to move from Rome to the north in 1943.57_A

letter written in October 1947 from the Italian General Consulate in New York to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs illustrates the continuity in tourism policy after the war, stating that due to many requests and lack of up to date promotional material from the CIT and ENIT pre-war promotion material was distributed in the United States.58

From 1947 onwards also several new organisations were founded in Italy to stimulate tourism. In the first information bulletin from the ENIT, the

Notiziario Turistico, published on

the 15th_{of January 1947, a meeting}

in Rome of a special commission to talk about problems in the tourism industry was announced. This commission consisted of several representatives from the Italian tourism industry, such as the Italian state railways and the Touring Club Italiano, a major national Italian tourism organisation. The most important conclusion of this meeting was that all parties voted to establish an official Commissariat for Tourism, consisting of people from several ministries that were linked to

57_{Ibid., 15-16 and 347-348.}

58_{‘Materiale di Propaganda Turistica’ in ASD, DGAE A, Busta 247.}

Figure 3: ENIT poster to promote Rome from 1942, in:

Manifesti. Viaggio in Italia attraverso la pubblicità 1895-1960, Bibliotheca Hertziana, Rome.

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tourism, such as the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The main goal of the Commissariat was to develop tourism propaganda abroad and to improve the movement of travellers in Italy through technical means, such as better railway systems and roads. In the Notiziario Turistico the ENIT stated that they were very pleased with the foundation of this Commissariat for Tourism, since the proposed improvements for tourism of this Commissariat were similar to ideas presented by the ENIT to the Italian Government in December 1944.59_{This remark also illustrates continuity:}

already before the end of the war Italian tourist companies thought about measures to develop the postwar Italian tourism industry.

From the 15th_{until the 19}th_{of May 1947 the first post-war national tourism}

congress took place in Genoa. People from a wide variety of tourist organisations attended the congress, such as the general director of the CIT in Rome and members of the Chamber of Commerce, Industry and Agriculture in Genoa. The topics that were discussed varied from tourism propaganda and the economic benefits of tourism, to the particular attractions of Italy for foreigners and the Italian cultural institutions with their linkage with tourism abroad. More than 140 topics in total were discussed during this extensive congress.60_{Most likely, the tasks of the new}

Commissariat for Tourism were specified as well, since shortly after this congress, on the 20th_{of May, the foundation of the Commissariat was again announced in a}

Notiziario Turistico and its goal to create a more systematic organisation of tourism

and tourism traffic. On the 15th_{of October the ENIT announced that a law was passed}

concerning the institution of the Commissariat by a council of ministers, so that ‘The Italian government will be in a position to take all the necessary steps to assure the best assistance to all tourists and to improve tourist facilities’.61

In addition to a national Commissariat for Tourism, a Roman tourist board was also founded in 1947 to stimulate tourism to the city and to think about new ways to use tourism for the maximum benefit of the city. Amongst the members of the Roman tourist board were representatives from the police department, the Chamber of Commerce, the labour unions, the Innkeepers association, the official Committee

59_{ENIT Biblioteca storica (in next note: Biblioteca ENIT) Rome, Notiziario Turistico E.N.I.T. –}

Bolletino di Informazioni Turistiche, 1946-1949. The bulletin does not say clearly to which Italian

Government these ideas were presented, but since the ENIT moved to the north in 1943 this was probabbly the government of the Italian Social Republic (also known as Republic of Salò).

60_{Biblioteca ENIT, Tourism Problems, Memorandums and Notes presented at the first National}

Congress on Tourism (Genoa 1947).

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of Italian Tourism, and people working in the transport sector.62_{These examples}

demonstrate that already in 1947 (and in some cases even before) on both a national as well as a local level several initiatives were taken to stimulate tourism in Italy and Rome, with as main argument that stimulating the tourism industry would have a positive effect on the Italian economy. Measures to stimulate the tourism industry in Italy mostly concerned improving tourism facilities in 1947, although the Commissariat for Tourism also had as a goal to develop tourism propaganda meant for abroad.

Hypnotised by advertising

Tourism occupied a central role in U.S. foreign policy after the war, as Christopher Endy has shown in Cold War Holidays. The author further explains how travel companies such as Pan American Airways and American Express saw new opportunities to receive U.S. government support in the context of Europe’s post-war economic problems. These companies argued how tourism could fix the trade and currency deficits in Western Europe, since tourists would bring dollars to Europe that could be used to pay for American exports. Brochures were circulated among U.S. government and business leaders promoting tourism.63_{However, these American}

brochures not only circulated in the United States, but were also sent to European countries. For example, two major American publications from 1947 appear in the Roman archives that were widely discussed in Italian governmental correspondence:

The quickest way to help foreign countries to earn American dollars, published by

American Express and How to get the American travel dollar, published by the New

York Times.64

In The quickest way to help foreign countries to earn American dollars both European and American governments, institutions and policymakers are given advice and recommendations for stimulating tourism. The study even explicitly asks various American state departments to cooperate and try to implement the recommendations from the study, such as improving the exchange system, other financial inducements to the American traveller, and to allow larger import allowances for returning travellers. Other problems that were identified in this study were the lack of cheap

62_{Harrison, ‘Tourist Time in Italy’.} 63_{Endy, Cold War Holidays, 42-43.}

64_{American Express, The quickest way to help foreign countries to earn American dollars (1947) in:}

ASD, Busta 247 and the New York Times, How to get the American travel dollar (1947) in: ASD, DGAE A, Busta 176.

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transportation facilities and the laws and legislations concerning visa and passports.65

In both studies the emphasis lies on the importance of advertising within the United States to attract future tourists. In How to get the American travel dollar this is illustrated with a quote from a French magazine: ‘The American is hypnotized by advertising. With reference to his clothing, his food, his amusements, every act of his life, he accepts its suggestions. He buys the products which are most widely advertised.’66_{In the study by American Express the investments of the American}

travel industry itself are underscored, creating a desire for foreign travel through advertising, promotion and selling. However, according to this booklet, the American travel industry ‘cannot possibly carry the load on the scale necessary to produce major results’. 67 _{As a consequence, advertising and promotion by foreign}

governments and governmental agencies is needed: ‘To bring Americans within their borders, foreign governments must let Americans know about their attractions and facilities (…) must make Americans want to see and experience what they have to offer’.68_{Promotion, advertising and publicity are seen as necessary and ‘tested}

devices through which the American public is stimulated to buy.’69

In How to get the American travel dollar a distinction is made between the desire to travel and the people who actually travel. According to this study, most Americans have the longing to travel, but actual travel ‘requires more money than the great majority of American families can afford to spend’.70_{Which was quite true,}

especially in 1947.71_{The American Express study has a more positive approach,}

emphasising the United States’ foreign travel potential in the future, probably due to the fact that American Express was a commercial company.72_{Aside from these}

differences, both studies highlight the need for investments in advertising to awaken the desire for- and longing to travel, marking the importance of tourism as a consumer item.

65_{American Express, The quickest way to help foreign countries to earn American dollars.} 66_{The New York Times, How to get the American travel dollar.}

67_{American Express, The quickest way to help foreign countries to earn American dollars.} 68_Ibid.

69_Ibid.

70_{The New York Times, How to get the American travel dollar.}

71_{Travelling was still an elitist practice, probably mostly done by wealthy (and white) Americans,}

although more research should be done to gain more insight in the precise background and class of American travellers to Europe in the years after the Second World War. For general statistics of (the growth of) American tourism to Italy see appendix 1, pp. 121.

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Apart from How to get the American Travel Dollar, the New York Times also send the Vacation Travel Study (1947) to several European governments, including the Italian government. The Vacation Travel Study showed the outcome of a research, in which visitors (2522 in total) of the International Travel Exposition in New York were interviewed.73_{The letter - send by the Italian embassy located in the}

United States - that accompanied this study specifically addressed Italy’s policy towards tourism, stating that, according to Alberto Tarchiani, the Italian ambassador to the United States, the Vacation Travel Study would help ‘to formulate plans for attracting more tourists to Italy’.74_{The study demonstrated that Italy was fourth on}

the list of American travel goals and also emphasised the importance of advertising: ‘with well-directed advertising, you will undoubtedly be able to increase the Italian share of the American travel dollar considerably in 1948’.75_{Both the letter as the fact}

that the study was sent to the Italian government demonstrates that Italian politicians, or at least the Italian ambassador, agreed with the American recommendations regarding the importance of advertising in attracting American tourists.

However, which themes were to be advertised? According to How to get the

American travel dollar tourist advertisements should point out the unique

advantages of an area, such as scenery and good food. The publication states for all European countries similarly: ‘Your country has (….) centuries of traditional hospitality, a background of preserved culture and suave, personal, intimate service that is most refreshing and welcome to the American tourist. You have an abundance of strong advertising themes.’76_{The study ends with a summary of different}

advertising themes for Europe: ‘Now is the time for you to tell Americans about the charm of your country, the culture, the gaiety of your cities, the beauty of your countryside, in order that they may be irresistibly drawn to you.’77_{In How to get the}

American travel dollar several European countries are seen as one; European

tradition and culture as a whole forms a powerful advertising theme for Americans. However, what the European tradition and culture exactly consists of remains rather unspecified.

73_{The New York Times, Vacation Travel Study (1947) in: ASD, DGAE A, Busta 176.}

74_{‘The seven highlights of the Vacation Travel Study of the New York Times’ in: ASD, DGAE A, Busta}

176.

75_{The New York Times, Vacation Travel Study.}

76_{The New York Times, How to get the American travel dollar.} 77_Ibid.

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When looking at most articles in newspapers and magazines about tourism to Italy and Rome in the years before the Marshall Plan was implemented, a recurring theme is to reassure the American readers that tourist facilities in Europe are sufficient and back to a pre-war level, such as the article ‘The Italian skies are Sunny’, published in the Vacation preview of the New York Times on the 4th_{of May 1947.}

According to this article, American tourists who go to Italy will be able to visit all the traditional Italian beauty spots and places of artistic and historical interest: ‘In Rome, for instance, the Vatican galleries and all the other museums have returned to the normal conditions that American tourists knew before the war.’78_{Another example is}

‘Tourist Time in Italy – Nation Planning Big Things for Tourists to Bolster Economy’ that was also published in May 1947 in the Christian Science Monitor. The article informs the reader that Italy is still a tourist’s dream, despite the wreckage of war. As an example of improvements which were implemented to the Italian tourist industry, the article mentions a big campaign which was set up to persuade the Italian government to set aside funds for encouraging tourism: ‘This was done by former governments, above all by that of Mussolini, and it was an unqualified success’.79_{It is}

quite notable that in this short period after the war the tourism policy of Mussolini is depicted as an example to the Italian government in an American newspaper.

Another central topic in articles about tourism published in the early post-war period is the importance of tourism for the economic recovery of Europe. For example in ‘Tourist Time in Italy’: ‘without the money brought in by outside visitors, untold thousands of Romans would be thrown out of work, the general standard of living undercut and some of the city’s comeliness would be gone through a lack of funds needed to keep it up’.80_{The Roman tourist board is also cited to emphasise the}

importance of tourism for Rome, claiming that: ‘Rome has no other means of livelihood’.81_{From these examples it becomes clear that Italy is presented as in need}

of the money that American tourists could bring, while at the same time depicting future American tourists to Italy as benefactors.

The idea of Americans as benefactors is central to the symbolic meaning of post-war travelling. The conclusion of the American Express study is especially

78_{Arnaldo Cortesi, ‘The Italian Skies are Sunny’, The New York Times Vacation Preview, 4 May 1947}

in: ASD, DGAE A, 176.

79_{Joseph G. Harrison, ‘Tourist Time in Italy – Nation planning big things for tourists to bolster}

economy’, Christian Science Monitor, 24 May 1947, ASD, DGAE A, 247.

80_Ibid. 81_Ibid.

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interesting when keeping in mind that both American as European governments received this study:

The American Travel industry lives by selling travel. It believes in travel as social, political and economic force. It believes that travel abroad is not only a powerful instrument for helping foreign nations to gain needed dollars…but that also through such travel Americans will possess a better understanding of the role in which destiny has placed them.82

This quote illustrates how a company like American Express presented the United States as the rightful heir of Europe after the Second World War. As ‘winners’ of the war, it was now the United States’ destiny to get to know the countries better which they had saved. In this quote, the United Sates are displayed as a leader in a new world order, thereby also underscoring the importance and symbolic meaning of travel in defining these post-war power relations.

These American sources dealing with tourist development from the 1947s give an insight in how already before the Marshall Plan a specific idea concerning the role of the United States with respect to Europe was propagated: both within advice on tourism development and because of economic recovery through tourism. While the Italian initiatives in 1947 concentrated on improving tourist facilities and attracting tourists more generally, the American recommendations were directed on stimulating American tourism to Italy, by highlighting the importance of advertising to attract American tourists. Within this process, Americans were presented as benefactors and heirs of Europe, which had to be visited to stimulate the economic recovery of the continent and because of somewhat vague notions of tradition and culture.

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II The European Travel Commission

Uniting the European travel industry

Although several initiatives were applied in both the United States and Italy to stimulate the development of post-war travel, no other initiative was set up on such a large scale as the Marshall Plan, which was implemented in 1948 and contained a special section on the development of travel. Because of the Marshall Plan, new organisations were created and knowledge-transfers instigated, both contributed to the development of the tourism industry. Through these initiatives to stimulate travel, certain ideas about post-war identities of the United States and Europe were propagated. As Carlo Spagnolo has stated, economic and political ambitions of the Marshall Plan should be considered together: beyond its geopolitical dimension, the Marshall Plan was the founding act of a post-war Western identity and of its ideological values.83_{A focus on the statement of travel in the Marshall Plan and the}

ETC, the main travel organisation of the Marshall Plan, will demonstrate how a context developed in which this post-war Western identity could develop.

The ETC was founded in Oslo in June 1948 as a part of Marshall Plan policy to stimulate American tourism to Europe. Composed of several representatives of travel organisations from participating countries, the ETC was officially recognised as the advisory body on travel development by the OEEC in Paris. The ETC encouraged tourism by initiating, for example, a joint advertising campaign in the United States to promote American travel to Europe, by researching the American tourism industry, and by giving advice on how to develop the European tourism industry. The main goal of the ETC was to unite the European travel industry and to tie the economies of Western European nations together, in order to show Americans that European unity would become a reality.84_{This goal can easily be placed in line with}

the main goal of the Marshall Plan to ensure a lasting peace by unifying western countries.

The importance of the ETC and the emphasis on travel in the Marshall Plan is also mentioned in the statement of travel that was included in the Marshall Plan, as

83_{Carlo Spagnolo, ‘Reinterpreting the Marshall Plan: The Impact of the European Recovery}

Programme in Britain, France, Western Germany, and Italy (1947-1952)’ in: Dominik Geppert (ed.),

The Postwar Challenge. Cultural, Social, and Political Change in Western Europe, 1945-1958

(London 2003), 275-298, 275 and 282.

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‘one of the greatest economic resources for producing employment and exchange.’85

The cooperative character of the ETC is also underscored in this statement, as it put the envisioned interchange of ideas in practice. Special weight was given to American tourism to Europe by highlighting the ‘American visitors Program’. After the war, the dollar contribution of U.S. visitors to and within European countries was to be especially welcomed, according to the statement. As a consequence, travel of U.S. citizens was to be encouraged, a practice in which both Europeans and Americans were to cooperate. Examples given in the statement of travel are reductions in trans-Atlantic fares, expansion of low-cost accommodation to increase the volume of travel, and publicity and sales work of the ETC. Cooperation is a central element in this statement, underscoring that it is expected ‘that each government will give proper weight to the implementation of these policies in developing its general program of requirements for extraordinary financial assistance’.86

The third and fourth program within the statement of travel of the Marshall Plan focuses on grants, loans and matching funds that could be requested for financing travel development projects and a travel investment guarantees program, concerning U.S. private investments in the travel plant. The individual members of the ETC were to be responsible for the initiation of this program and the whole commission was to provide the overall cooperation and coordination.87_{In addition to}

these ideas for travel programs, a travel development section was established in the Economic Cooperation Administration (ECA) office in Paris, under guidance of W. Averell Harriman, a special U.S. representative in Europe. This section was to be primarily concerned with the elimination of barriers to U.S. travellers, the improvement of travel conditions and the construction of adequate facilities and accommodations. Activities carried out by this section included encouraging American investors to invest in hotel facilities abroad, stimulating off-season tourism and to lower taxes.88

The working parties of the ETC

At the beginning of the 1950s, the ETC sent multiple working parties, consisting of several representatives of countries that received Marshall Plan money to the United

85_{‘Statement of Travel’ in: ASD, MP, Busta 16 2)turismo.} 86_Ibid.

87_Ibid.

Roman Holiday. The Marshall Plan, American tourism to Rome, and the creation of the West (1947-1957)