Question: Who offered American aid to promote European recovery and reconstruction?
About the article "Marshall Plan", section "The Speech".

Candidate passages:
After the adjournment of the Moscow conference following six weeks of failed discussions with the Soviets regarding a potential German reconstruction, the United States concluded that a solution could not wait any longer.
To clarify the US's position, a major address by Secretary of State George Marshall was planned.
Marshall gave the address to the graduating class of Harvard University on June 5, 1947.
Standing on the steps of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, he offered American aid to promote European recovery and reconstruction.
The speech described the dysfunction of the European economy and presented a rationale for US aid.
The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down.
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Aside from the demoralizing effect on the world at large and the possibilities of disturbances arising as a result of the desperation of the people concerned, the consequences to the economy of the United States should be apparent to all.
It is logical that the United States should do whatever it is able to do to assist in the return of normal economic health to the world, without which there can be no political stability and no assured peace.
Our policy is not directed against any country, but against hunger, poverty, desperation and chaos.
Any government that is willing to assist in recovery will find full co-operation on the part of the USA.
Its purpose should be the revival of a working economy in the world so as to permit the emergence of political and social conditions in which free institutions can exist.
Marshall was convinced that economic stability would provide political stability in Europe.
He offered aid, but the European countries had to organize the program themselves.
The speech, written by Charles Bohlen, contained virtually no details and no numbers.
More a proposal than a plan, it was presented vaguely and made little impact in America.
Eight weeks after the Harvard speech, the State Department wrote in a confidential memorandum that "The Marshall Plan has been compared to a flying saucer — nobody knows what it looks like, how big it is, in what direction it is moving, or whether it really exists."
The most important element of the speech was the call for the Europeans to meet and create their own plan for rebuilding Europe, and that the United States would then fund this plan.
The administration felt that the plan would likely be unpopular among many Americans, and the speech was mainly directed at a European audience.
In an attempt to keep the speech out of American papers journalists were not contacted, and on the same day Truman called a press conference to take away headlines.
In contrast, Dean Acheson, an Under Secretary of State, was dispatched to contact the European media, especially the British media, and the speech was read in its entirety on the BBC.
The reconstruction plan, developed at a meeting of the participating European states, was established on June 5, 1947.
It offered the same aid to the Soviet Union and its allies, but they did not accept it, as to do so would be to allow a degree of US control over the Communist economies.
During the four years that the plan was operational, US donated $15 billion in economic and technical assistance to help the recovery of the European countries that had joined in the Organization for European Economic Co-operation.
In 2013, the equivalent sum reflecting currency inflation since 1948 totalled roughly $148 billion.
The $15 billion was in the context of a US GDP of $258 billion in 1948, and was on top of $15 billion in American aid to Europe between the end of the war and the start of the Plan that is counted separately from the Marshall Plan.
The Marshall Plan was replaced by the Mutual Security Plan at the end of 1951.
The ERP addressed each of the obstacles to postwar recovery.
The plan looked to the future, and did not focus on the destruction caused by the war.
Much more important were efforts to modernize European industrial and business practices using high-efficiency American models, reducing artificial trade barriers, and instilling a sense of hope and self-reliance.
By 1952, as the funding ended, the economy of every participant state had surpassed pre-war levels; for all Marshall Plan recipients, output in 1951 was at least 35% higher than in 1938.
Over the next two decades, Western Europe enjoyed unprecedented growth and prosperity, but economists are not sure what proportion was due directly to the ERP, what proportion indirectly, and how much would have happened without it.
A common American interpretation of the program's role in European recovery is the one expressed by Paul Hoffman, head of the Economic Cooperation Administration, in 1949, when he told Congress that Marshall aid had provided the "critical margin" on which other investment needed for European recovery depended.
The Marshall Plan was one of the first elements of European integration, as it erased trade barriers and set up institutions to coordinate the economy on a continental level — that is, it stimulated the total political reconstruction of western Europe.
Belgian economic historian Herman Van der Wee concludes the Marshall Plan was a "great success": "It gave a new impetus to reconstruction in Western Europe and made a decisive contribution to the renewal of the transport system, the modernization of industrial and agricultural equipment, the resumption of normal production, the raising of productivity, and the facilitating of intra-European trade."
Prime Minister of Italy Silvio Berlusconi refused foreign aid for the emergency, saying that Italians were "proud people" and had sufficient resources to deal with the crisis.
However he singled out the United States, announcing that he would accept aid for reconstruction: "If the United States wants to give a tangible sign of its solidarity with Italy, it could take on the responsibility of rebuilding heritage sites and churches.
We would be very happy to have this support."
and suggested the USA help rebuild "a small district of a town or a suburb".
Aid was offered by Austria, Brazil, Croatia, the European Union, France, Germany, Spain, Greece, Slovakia, Israel, Portugal, Iran, Macedonia, Mexico,Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Switzerland, Tunisia, theTurkish Red Crescent, Ukraine, and the United States.
Aid was also offered by various organisations, companies, sport clubs and celebrities including ACF Fiorentina, Carla Bruni, Madonna, S.S.C.
Napoli, Zastava and Fiat.
On Friday 20 November 2009 in Bruxelles, Pawel Samecki and Guido Bertolaso who, at that time, were European Commissioner for Regional Policy and commander in chief of the Italian Civil Protection department respectively, signed an agreement to destine 493,7 millions of euros from EU solidarity fund to help reconstruction in Abruzzo 
It has been reported that Maclean suggested to Moscow that the goal of the Marshall Plan was to ensure American economic domination in Europe.
Secretary of State George Marshall addressed the graduating class of Harvard University on 5 June 1947.
Standing on the steps of Memorial Church in Harvard Yard, he offered American aid to promote European recovery and reconstruction.
Russia was an intended recipient as were the countries under Russian occupation.
Although initially the US had planned to extract war reparations under the Morgenthau Plan, this had been abandoned.
and the US simply took over patents and intellectual property worth perhaps $10 billion at today's prices.
The Marshall Plan was rejected by Stalin and his collaborators steadily imposed Communist-party rule throughout Eastern Europe, whilst stripping East Germany bare of plant and machinery and scientists.
Before the war, Stalin had arrested Western technical experts as spies and Maclean seems to have fed this paranoia over US aid.
Maclean is also reported to have commented on the World Bank created at the Bretton Woods Conference in 1944 and the International Monetary Fund, a related institution.
John Maynard Keynes a British economist and Harry Dexter White had devised the plans and rules for these.
They were in effect an Anglo-American creation.
Both are based in Washington, D.C., the World Bank is run by an American, and the IMF by a European.
Maclean reportedly suggested to the KGB that they would be under the control of American financial capital.
Whilst arguably true, since the bank's initial capital of $7.67 billion was mostly from the US, this was neither secret nor helpful.
Now that the Venona transcripts have been published, it is clear that Maclean's 12 cables did not mention such information.
In fact, neither he nor his Soviet controller provided any commentary.
So this report may have been disinformation from British Intelligence to protect Philby, who was still operational.
The Venona decrypts identified Harry Dexter White as a Soviet agent denoted at various times under the code names "Lawyer", "Richard", and "Jurist".
Two years after his death, in a memorandum dated 15 October 1950, White was positively identified by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), through evidence gathered by the Venona project, as a Soviet source, code named "Jurist".
Years later, the Justice Department publicly disclosed the existence of the Venona project which deciphered Soviet cable traffic naming White as "Jurist", a Soviet intelligence source.
White was the key American architect of the World Bank and IMF.
The State Department in Washington admitted after his disappearance that Maclean had been a member of the committee that exchanged information between the partners in the development of the atomic bomb.
He added that information about fissionable materials, production processes, weapons technology, and the development of stockpiles of fissionable materials and weapons had ceased in 1946.
Maclean had information of Canadian, United States, and British atomic patents for peacetime uses, and amounts of uranium available to the three countries at that time.
Some of the information available to him in 1947 and 1948 (when he was Secretary of the Combined Policy Committee concerned with atomic energy policy) was classified and would have been useful at that time to the Soviet atomic energy department and strategic planners.
But changes in the rate and scale of the United States program in the intervening years would have made the information obsolete by 1951.
The author "S. J. Hamrick" (alias of W. T. Tyler, a Foreign Service officer) claims that Maclean was deliberately exaggerating the size of the stockpile. 
As of August 27, 2012 the rail line from Springfield, MA to East Northfield, MA was under reconstruction with $73 million of funding from the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.