George C.

Marshall

(1880-1959). As chief of staff of the United States Army during World War II, it fell to
Marshall to raise, train, and equip an army of several million men. It was Marshall who
selected the officer corps and it was Marshall who played a leading role in planning
military operations on a global scale. In the end, it was Marshall whom British Prime
Minister Winston Churchill hailed as "the true organizer of victory."

Yet history will associate Marshall foremost as the author of the Marshall Plan. The idea
of extending billions of American dollars for European economic recovery was not his
alone. He was only one of many Western leaders who realized the tragic consequences of
doing nothing for those war-shattered countries in which basic living conditions were
deplorable and still deteriorating two years after the end of the fighting. But Marshall,
more than anyone else, led the way. In an address at Harvard University on June 5, 1947,
Marshall, in his capacity as secretary of state, articulated the general principles of the
Marshall Plan. Between 1948 and 1951, the United States contributed more than thirteen
billion dollars of economic, agricultural, and technical assistance toward the recovery of
free Europe. The Marshall Plan was generally acclaimed a success in its day and has
admirably withstood the rigors of historical inquiry. Moreover, it gave impetus to the
formation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and to the European Common
Market. In recognition of Marshall's world leadership, he was awarded the Nobel Peace
Prize in 1953.

To commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the Marshall Plan, the National Portrait
Gallery and the George C. Marshall Foundation have produced this exhibition,
remembering Marshall and the leaders with whom he helped shape history for much of
the twentieth century.

John Kennedy
On November 22, 1963, when he was hardly past his first thousand days in office, John
Fitzgerald Kennedy was killed by an assassin's bullets as his motorcade wound through Dallas,
Texas. Kennedy was the youngest man elected President; he was the youngest to die.

Of Irish descent, he was born in Brookline, Massachusetts, on May 29, 1917. Graduating from
Harvard in 1940, he entered the Navy. In 1943, when his PT boat was rammed and sunk by a
Japanese destroyer, Kennedy, despite grave injuries, led the survivors through perilous waters to
safety.

Back from the war, he became a Democratic Congressman from the Boston area, advancing in
1953 to the Senate. He married Jacqueline Bouvier on September 12, 1953. In 1955, while
recuperating from a back operation, he wrote Profiles in Courage, which won the Pulitzer Prize in
history.