• Throughout the postwar period US State Department officials sent regular reports back to Washington on the conditions in the country they were working in. You have seen many examples of this kind of report from British Foreign Office officials.
  
• US officials were extremely concerned in 1947 about the spread of Communism in Europe. After WW2 most European states were in ruins. Conditions were made even worse by an exceptionally bad winter in 1947. US officials believed that Communist activists used poverty and hunger to stir up trouble and gain support for Communism.
  
• This was the thinking behind the Truman Doctrine (March 1947) and the Marshall Plan which followed soon afterwards (June-July 1947).
  
• This document is a summary of the telegrams coming in from State Department officials across Europe. This one refers to Hungary, Germany and Greece but similar reports were coming from across Europe.