matters, Dulles vigorously opposed the Allies’ demands on Germany. His warning that burdensome reparations would produce further instability and international turmoil went unheeded. Upon his return to private practice, Dulles took on a number of international cases; on several occasions, he was called back to Washington to assist in the government’s negotiation of foreign loans.

Dulles was a burly, strongly built man with a somewhat ponderous, deliberate manner. He had broad oval features, a wide mouth, and a blunt, protruding nose. His strong, heavy jaw, heavy eyebrows, and penetrating blue eyes behind wire-rimmed glasses gave an impression of firm determination. Even in his impromptu speeches, Dulles spoke incisively and in a well-organized manner, but his voice was often described as flat, and he had a tendency to slur some consonants.

As his professional career developed, Dulles, as a Presbyterian elder, remained active in church work. In 1940, he became chairman of the Commission on a Just and Durable Peace, an organization created under the auspices of the Federal Council of Churches. He acted as well as an adviser to Thomas E. Dewey when the Republican governor of New York ran for president in 1944. Dulles’ experience in foreign policy was also appreciated by the Democratic Administration in power; he was made a State Department adviser to the San Francisco Conference of 1945, which led to the foundation of the United Nations. He served on several other diplomatic assignments; he also entered politics again when, in 1949, he was appointed to the seat of a retiring senator from New York. He lost the ensuing by-election, and then was called back to the State Department. In one of the major achievements of his career, Dulles, in 1951, concluded negotiations which, while circumventing the Soviet Union and Communist China, led to a formal peace treaty with Japan and widened the United States’ security arrangements in the Pacific.

In 1952, Dulles served as an adviser to Dwight D. Eisenhower in his campaign for the presidency; his own views were expressed in articles calling for “a policy of boldness” and the “rollback” of Soviet power in Europe. In a press interview, Dulles stated his belief that the United States should “go to the brink of war” to reverse Communist advances, and the phrase “brinkmanship” was widely used to describe his views on foreign policy. Upon Eisenhower’s victory in the election, Dulles was made secretary of state; forthwith he concerned himself with negotiations to end three years of conflict in Korea. Dulles issued veiled warnings about the bombing of Chinese airfields and the use of nuclear weapons shortly before an armistice was concluded, in July, 1953. Another crisis loomed in Indochina, where Communist guerrillas in Vietnam threatened to displace French forces who were fighting to preserve their colonial outposts. Although he was unable to obtain support elsewhere for a proposed American military intervention, Dulles exerted his influence to limit Communist gains in territory during the negotiation of the Geneva Accords of 1954. France then granted independence to Laos and Cambodia and accepted the partition of Vietnam between Communist and non-Communist factions.

Dulles urged the United States’ allies to improve their military preparations and enunciated a doctrine of “massive retaliation,” with nuclear weapons, as a means of deterring Soviet ventures. When European leaders could not agree on the creation of a multinational army, he announced his approval for the formation of a West German army, to be used in conjunction with the Atlantic alliance. In May, 1955, Dulles took part in the negotiations by which the United States, Britain, France, and the Soviet Union ended their occupation of Austria and guaranteed that country’s independent, neutral status; some of the secretary’s admirers maintained that his insistence on a rapid resolution of this issue forced the Soviet representatives to make concessions otherwise not forthcoming. During the summer and autumn of 1955, allied leaders met their Soviet counterparts at summit conferences held in Geneva; disarmament and European security problems were discussed there. During the meetings, Dulles was decidedly more wary of Soviet officials than were the other Western participants.

Problems of a different order arose in the Middle East, where Dulles promoted regional defense organizations to counteract Soviet ambitions. In 1955, Egypt began to buy military equipment from the Soviet bloc; the next year, Dulles rejected Egypt’s request for financial assistance in building the Aswan Dam. President Gamal Abdul Nasser of Egypt retaliated by nationalizing the Suez Canal Company. Britain and France, which depended upon oil supplies from the Middle East, argued for international sanctions against Egypt and attempted to obtain Dulles’ support against Nasser. In October, 1956, Israel launched a surprise invasion of the Sinai peninsula, and British and French forces occupied the Suez Canal zone. There was profound dismay in London and Paris when Dulles openly condemned the attack and urged the invading powers to withdraw. Although the crisis subsided, the Atlantic alliance had undergone serious strain.

Another crisis broke out within days of the Suez war: An insurrection in Hungary led to a massive invasion of that country by Soviet armored forces. In spite of Dulles’ proclaimed policy of the “liberation” of Eastern Europe, President Eisenhower was compelled to acknowledge that the United States was in no position to challenge the Soviet Union’s domination of small nations within its orbit.

More vigorous responses were possible elsewhere. To combat political instability in the Middle East, where it was feared that Nasserist or pro-Soviet influence was spreading, marines were sent to Lebanon in July, 1958. An acute crisis arose when Communist China began shelling islands situated between Formosa and the mainland; the American Seventh Fleet was then stationed in the Formosa Straits, and Dulles bluntly warned against any further hostile actions. European concerns arose once again in the last crisis of Dulles’ life. In November, 1958, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev demanded a change in the status of Berlin. On behalf of his government, Dulles insisted that American forces would remain in the divided city.

Dulles had recurrently been troubled with ill health, which he tolerated with remarkable courage and good humor. During the Suez crisis of 1956, he had been hospitalized for treatment of a cancerous colon; this condition hampered him during later years, and eventually further operations were necessary. In February, 1959, he was treated for a hernia; the cancer also was found to have spread. Dulles later offered his resignation as secretary of state, which was accepted on April 15. After a gallant struggle with his illness, he succumbed finally on May 24, 1959, at the Walter Reed Hospital in Washington, D.C.

Summary

During his tenure as secretary of state, Dulles was alternately regarded as a defender of free nations or a threat to peace; he explained his policy as the calculation of means short of war by which Communist powers might be constrained to yield. His diplomatic style was forthright and audacious. Many of his statements were couched in moral and religious summons to combat Communist encroachments around the world. On the other hand, his participation was important for the conclusion of major international agreements, such as the Korean armistice and the Austrian State Treaty. Summit meetings with Soviet leaders went ahead. Dulles warned of difficult and prolonged periods of international rivalry, but, upon many occasions, he also practiced the art of negotiation with his adversaries.

Dulles was, on the whole, favorably regarded by Western observers while he was in office and for some time thereafter; since the Vietnam War, historians critical of him have contended that his insistence on the monolithic unity of aims among Communist states left American foreign policy in an excessively rigid and unyielding position. According to this line of argument, Dulles unnecessarily intensified the Cold War and burdened the United States with commitments to resist Communism on a global scale. For others, however, it is possible to regard Dulles’ diplomacy as the expression of views that were held in the United States during a specific period, before Soviet or Chinese aims in the Cold War had become manifest. In this view, Dulles formulated an approach to foreign policy that stated American interests and aims in bold and definite terms and thus answered the anxieties of his times without the actual resort to war.

Bibliography

Berding, Andrew H. Dulles on Diplomacy. Princeton, N.J.: Van Nostrand, 1965. Sympathetic recollections of a professional diplomat who for two years was assistant secretary of state under Dulles. Based on Dulles’ speeches and the author’s lengthy conference notes.

Dulles, Eleanor Lansing. Chances of a Lifetime: A Memoir. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980. The reminiscences of Dulles’ sister, who led a varied life of authorship combined with travel and some diplomatic functions. There are a number of useful passages about her brother’s early years and about the crises he confronted as secretary of state.

Dulles, John Foster. War or Peace. New York: Macmillan, 1950. A tract for the times, this work sets forth Dulles’ views concerning Communism and the relative balance of forces at midcentury. He discusses the extent of Communist aims while expressing his hopes for reversing Soviet and Chinese advances without causing a world war.

Gerson, Louis L. John Foster Dulles. New York: Cooper Square Publishers, 1967. Volume 17 of the series “The American Secretaries of State and Their Diplomacy,” this is well-rounded and generally sympathetic study of Dulles’ diplomacy by a leading authority on American foreign policy. On balance, the author upholds Dulles’ judgments on Communism and international security.

Goold-Adams, Richard. John Foster Dulles: A Reappraisal. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1962. This sprightly account, by a well-informed British journalist, sifts apart the problems of substance and style in Dulles’ approach to international relations; while critical in some respects, in others, Goold-Adams acknowledges Dulles’ strengths as a negotiator.

Guhin, Michael A. John Foster Dulles: A Statesman and His Times. New York: Columbia University Press, 1972. A topical examination of Dulles’ pronouncements on foreign policy, this work contends that he was neither so inflexible nor so doctrinaire as many have claimed.

Hoopes, Townsend. The Devil and John Foster Dulles. Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1973. A full-scale biography, this work was written at the end of the Vietnam War, and the author implies that Dulles cast American foreign policy in a rigid mold that unduly emphasized anti-Communism. Particular attention is paid to Dulles’ positions on Middle Eastern and Asian crises; the moral and religious elements in his diplomacy are stressed and commented upon unfavorably.

Kahin, Audrey, and George McTurnan Kahin. Subversion as Foreign Policy: The Secret Eisenhower and Dulles Debacle in Indonesia. New York: New Press, 1995.

Marks, Frederick W. Power and Peace: The Diplomacy of John Foster Dulles. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 1993.

Mosley, Leonard. Dulles: A Biography of Eleanor, Allen, and John FosterDulles and Their Family Network. New York: Dial Press, 1978. A lengthy popular work, somewhat fast and loose in its presentation of facts, which deals as much with Allen Dulles and his career in government intelligence, as with John Foster Dulles’ diplomatic work. For all of the Dulleses, matters of personality are emphasized as much as their actual political concerns.

Pruessen, Ronald W. John Foster Dulles: The Road to Power. New York: Free Press, 1982. The most detailed single account of Dulles’ life before he became secretary of state, this work is written from a new leftist standpoint, but it fully acknowledges the complexity of its subject’s character. The contrapuntal influences of his legal career and his religious beliefs are discussed in relation to Dulles’ political work and government service from the early years through the onset of the Cold War.

Toulouse, Mark G. The Transformation of John Foster Dulles: From Prophet of Realism to Priest of Nationalism. Macon, Ga.: Mercer University Press, 1985. A study of the years until 1952, this work contends, perhaps too strongly, that Dulles’ political views were intertwined with his theological outlook. His church-affiliated work during World War II and his relations with religious groups during the early Cold War are explored at length.