 In California, a German pilot trains in an American-built supersonic jet fighter. In Iran, sailors train in ships supplied by the United States. In Greece, Greek paratroopers themselves masters of guerrilla warfare train under the watchful eyes of an American advisor. In Turkey, a soldier learns to read and write. And in Washington, the president tells the nation. We need the capability of placing in any critical area, at the appropriate time, a force which combined with those of our allies is large enough to make clear our determination and our ability to defend our rights at all costs and to meet all levels of aggressive pressure with whatever levels of force are required. We intend to have a wider choice than humiliation or all-out nuclear action. I'm Alexander Skorby. The wider choice to which President Kennedy refers includes the many courses of action open to nations from quiet settlement of differences at the conference table to war. In recent years, United States military assistance to allied nations has contributed importantly to the strength of the free world. It helps make possible a wider choice. In the following report, you will see how certain vital aspects of our military assistance program contribute to the defense and well-being of a few representative countries in Europe and the Middle East. Its army presents the Big Picture, an official report produced for the armed forces and the American people. Vice men have always tended to band together in the face of a common threat, knowing that unity breeds strength. Military support and assistance between nations has prevented wars in the past. It has also helped to win them when prevention became impossible. But as a dramatic instrument of our foreign policy, military assistance to other nations is of comparatively recent origin. Our first modern experience was forced upon us by the distempered mind of Adolf Hitler. To assist Great Britain and to help guard our own national security, President Roosevelt proposed and Congress approved the transfer of 50 American destroyers to England. The Lend-Lease Act of 1941 sent more than $49 billion worth of military aid to our allies. Following the Second World War, we inherited a large share of responsibility for world leadership. Our immediate problem was how to help the Europeans help themselves. When the Iron Curtains slammed down abruptly in 1946 and the Cold War began, our initial answer to the Soviet challenge was in the form of economic aid, but not for long. Communist guerrilla operations in Greece and threats of aggression against Turkey forced us to undertake the first large-scale program of post-war American military assistance. This is no more than a frank recognition that totalitarian regimes imposed upon free peoples by direct or indirect aggression undermine the foundations of international peace and hence the security of the United States. I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures. If Greece should fall under the control of an armed minority, the effect upon its neighbor Turkey would be immediate and serious. Confusion and disorder might well spread throughout the entire Middle East. Moreover, the disappearance of Greece as an independent state would have a profound effect upon those countries in Europe whose peoples are struggling against great difficulties to maintain their freedoms and their independence while they repair the damages of war. Collapse of free institutions and loss of independence would be disastrous not only for them but for their world. The Greek-Turkish Assistance Act of 1947 enabled us to provide the needed immediate support but it was only a small part of what Europe would require as Soviet pressures mounted. Communist tactics tried to keep the free nations off balance and the following year the squeeze was on West Berlin. Again, a stop-gap defense was divided and the Berlin Airlift answered the challenge. The Atlantic Treaty Organization, NATO, was created to unify the defense posture of Western Europe, the United States and Canada and resist any further communist advances. Our present military assistance program is made necessary by the harshest threat of our times. The policy which guides it is based upon our enduring conviction that peace can be guaranteed by collective strength and preparedness. The friendly nations which receive our aid span the globe. They include advanced and undeveloped countries. Some have existed for centuries, others are only newly independent. There are differences in politics, in religion, in color and in language. But these countries are joined in a common determination to resist communist encroachment upon their territories and their peoples. Among us they receive training, advice and material support, while we in turn depend upon them as essential links in our defensive perimeter, as free fortresses along the main line of resistance in the Cold War. America's military assistance program is both enormous and complex. It is geared to each country's need in terms of the communist threat and its cost to the American taxpayer exceeds a billion and a half dollars annually. More than 8,000 hand-picked American military personnel carry the responsibility for its effectiveness. In Western Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Indian subcontinent, Southeast Asia and the Far East and Latin America, our military advisory groups and missions help provide a kind of free world insurance secured in Europe by the NATO Alliance and running eastward through two linking defensive shields, the Central Treaty Organization in the Middle East and our collective arrangement with the Southeast Asia countries, CETO. Today, against a background of widespread prosperity and economic health, the troops of the 15 NATO countries maintain their vigil. From the beginning, American weapons, training and leadership have been essential to the development of NATO arms. Without such assistance, thousands of additional American soldiers would have been required in Europe and additional millions of American dollars would have been spent to keep them at combat readiness. Character of United States military assistance to NATO has undergone a marked change over the years, underscoring the success of our program in Europe. Many tools of conventional warfare were supplied by America, but as free Europe's own production capacity caught up with NATO's routine needs, the dependence upon this kind of American aid diminished. Today, it is mainly in the realm of sophisticated weapons, as they are known to military men, that we are of primary assistance to our NATO allies. At United States training centers, NATO personnel receive instruction in our most advanced equipment and weapons system. These West German soldiers represent a highly successful example of our European program. Their clothing, the funds from which they are paid and most of their training is now exclusively German. They are supported entirely by their own people and require our direct aid only in special cases. In Greece, still another example is evident. Because of the limited industrial capacity of the country and the chronic poverty which still plagues much of the population, the United States military assistance program has been the foundation of Greek defense since the late 1940s. The Greek army not only carries its share of the NATO defense burden, but stands ready to defend Greece against communist military aggression and internal subversion. At the raiding force training center at Megalopetko, hand-picked troops learn the arduous business of guerrilla fighting. These rugged men are skilled paratroopers before they begin their training in special or unconventional warfare. Today's problem will test the hardest mountaineer and show the American advisor how much the men know. Military assistance to Greece is not cheap, but without our continued aid, this small industrious country could not support the military forces it requires to defend itself successfully. Russia's neighbor to the east is one of Russia's oldest adversaries. Fifteen times in the last thousand years, the Russians have tried to break through to the Mediterranean only to be thrown back by Turkish troops. Militantly anti-communist and fiercely independent, Turkey has a proud and ancient military tradition. Turks are NATO members and recipients of extensive American aid. Also like the Greeks, they face directly upon the communist world. Today are our bridge between Europe and the Middle East. Between NATO and Cento, weapons, equipment and advice have helped make the Turkish armed forces an effective deterrent against communist ventures in the critical Middle East. Military assistance is helping to do other things for this fast-developing republic. President Kennedy, in a recent message to Congress, said that military assistance can, in addition to its military purpose, make a contribution to a country's economic progress. Such a contribution is evident in Turkey. Young men frequently receive training in the armed forces, which will help them in later life. Trees have been created as a result of our military assistance program, which will have a far-reaching effect upon the entire national economy in the future. At this plant near Istanbul, American-made jeeps are assembled by Turkish labor for the Turkish army. Loads and income have been provided locally, and the operation represents a substantial saving to the American aid program. Turkey's army recruits cannot read or write at the time of their induction. To make better soldiers of them, a certain basic literacy is now required. The Turkish army, with the help of the American military advisory group and Georgetown University in Washington, has established a large-scale literacy training program to meet this need. For regular basic training, recruits now receive a rudimentary education under the new program. Hold a pencil before their army service began, learn enough to read simple instructions, or write a letter home. This young man and thousands like him will return to villages all over Turkey, better equipped to live as free citizens in a free world. Iran, Turkey's eastern neighbor and sento partner, boasts combined armed forces of nearly 200,000 men, all American trained and equipped, a sizable contribution to the total deterrent in the traditionally unstable Middle East. The Shah of Iran has publicly credited American aid with saving his country from communist takeover in recent years along the Soviet Union's southern frontier. Iran is particularly vulnerable to a conventional ground forces attack. The Iranian army has been trained and equipped by us to meet this threat and to deliver a stiff counterpunch should it ever materialize. Help protect Iran's strategically important oil resources and Persian Gulf ports, suffers from an underdeveloped economy. It's necessary to the future development of Iranian industry are now being learned by young men in the armed forces. Thus, the military assistance program, while assuring its own objectives, contributes to the development of the nation's single most important resource, skilled manpower. Cameras have been able to reveal only a small part of the big picture of military assistance to our European and Middle East allies. But from this limited view, the significance of the American program is clear. Without our help, our leadership and our weapons, the collective defense of our free world allies would not be possible. And without their military capabilities, we would be vastly outnumbered and dangerously limited in our choice of responses to communist pressure. The program has its critics at home and abroad. Some allied leaders insist that it's inadequate, but the dollars, weapons and supplies we give them are insufficient to meet their needs. Some prominent Americans have called for a cutback in the program to save money. But this fact remains. Military assistance offers America and her allies a workable necessary insurance from which the entire free world benefits. If we stood alone against the communist bloc, there would be a dangerous imbalance in forces. But with our allies, we have the strength and a favorable balance. Armies and weapons, armies and economic aid, advice and training, freedom and peace. These are words which underscore the central theme behind our military assistance program. In reality, it is only one of America's contributions to collective security, but its importance far exceeds its size. For many nations in the free world, it marks the difference between a hopeful future and no future at all. It is part of the answer to the most pressing problem of the western world, the spread of communism and its threat to free people everywhere. The big picture is an official report for the armed forces and the American people produced by the Army Pictorial Center, presented by the Department of the Army in cooperation with this station.