Boxcar Diplomacy is about two trains that crossed the Atlantic after WWII--one in friendship, the other in gratitude. The "Friendship Train" from America to Europe was initiated by columnist Drew Pearson who noted that communists were getting a foothold in a hungry Europe. Americans, he wrote, should showcase democracy with gifts of food from their pantries and the whole event should be filmed so that Europeans could see that this train was loaded with gifts given freely and from the heart. With cameras rolling, 25,000 people gave the train a grand send-off in Hollywood and in every small station across the country, there were parades, patriotic songs, and crowds waving flags. Eleven days later, 100,000 people paraded and cheered in the streets of New York as 700 boxcars rolled in with millions of dollars of food bound for Europe, without a dime of government support asked for or given.
Not all the food made it to its intended destination, but the message did as newsreels of the Friendship Train's journey across America were played in Europe. Fourteen months later, France sent an actual train to America -- this one composed of 49 vintage and beautifully refurbished boxcars, one for each state in the union, each loaded with thousands of gifts from people who had been touched by America's gifts of friendship in war and in peace. This book will take you back to the very beginning of the Cold War, when Americans united in a gesture of friendship to help people they would never meet and France reciprocated with thousands of gifts, each bearing a story of gratitude.