George C. Marshall Foundation
Virginia
On the post of the Virginia Military Institute in Lexington stands the museum and research library dedicated to George C. Marshall, one of the most consequential Americans of the twentieth century.
Marshall served as Army Chief of Staff during World War Two, then as Secretary of State, then as Secretary of Defense. As Secretary of State, he proposed the European Recovery Program in a Harvard commencement address in June of nineteen forty-seven. What the world came to call the Marshall Plan sent thirteen billion dollars in aid to rebuild Western Europe after the war, a sum worth well over one hundred billion dollars today. In nineteen fifty-three, Marshall received the Nobel Peace Prize for it.
The foundation was established that same year and dedicated on May twenty-third, nineteen sixty-four. The museum holds Marshall's Nobel Prize medal, a German Enigma cipher machine, and the Academy Award for Best Picture given to the film Patton, donated by the film's producer, Frank McCarthy.
