This speech was made after the United Kingdom said that they would stop helping Greece and Turkey in February 1947 since the U.K. was also poor after the cost of World War II. This meant that Greece and Turkey would still be poor and Truman believed that a poor Eastern Europe would convert to a Communist government more easily unless helped by the United States. Truman wrongly thought that the Soviets were helping the Greek Communist partisans when there was no clear proof.