Search Results for france
In 1994 Avis Bohlen, the Deputy Chief of Mission at the U.S. Embassy in Paris, was made Hillary Clinton’s Control Officer when she and President Bill Clinton visited France for the 50 year anniversary of the Allied invasion of Normandy. As with many such high-level visits, it was a diplomatic success but a strenuous challenge […]
An effective diplomat, dazzling socialite, and the mother of Winston Churchill’s grandson, Pamela Digby Churchill Hayward Harriman won the respect of fellow diplomats and adroitly handled complex problems related to the war in the Balkans, export subsidies, and intellectual property rights during her tenure as U.S. Ambassador to France from 1993-1997. Richard Holbrooke said of […]
Frances Willis was the first female to rise to the rank of Ambassador as a career Foreign Service Officer. After she was graduated from Stanford with a PhD in Political Science in 1923, she taught political science at Gardner College and Vassar College until she decided to switch careers, saying “I didn’t want to just […]
On June 21, 1966, France made the somewhat shocking move to withdraw its troops from the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO). This decision led by French president Charles de Gaulle complicated relations between the U.S. and Europe amidst clashing American and Communist spheres of influence. Though France remained politically in NATO, its actions cast doubt […]
Shortly after Nazi Germany invaded France in May 1940, the French government surrendered and signed the Second Armistice. Under its terms, the north of France was occupied and directly administered by the Nazis, while the south remained nominally independent under a government seated in Vichy, but which was still under suzerainty of the Nazis; it […]
The fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 ushered in a fraught time in the lives of East and West Germany — and the American diplomats posted there. U.S. diplomat Donald Bandler and his wife Jane found a novel way to reach out to East German diplomats in Bonn adjusting to the new order: the […]
Francisco Franco’s death in 1975 opened the path for newly-throned King Juan Carlos to become Spain’s head of state. His first independent action was to fire Prime Minister Carlos Arias Navarro. This came as a shock to citizens, diplomats, and Spanish government officials. Because the Juan Carlos had outwardly supported the Franco regime, while privately […]
Rebuilding Rwanda after the genocide was no easy task. USAID tasked George Lewis to head up that agency’s efforts to help a nation heal after one of the most horrific episodes in recent history. He faced extreme ethnic animosity, a destroyed country, and an “epic event in the history of human movement,” the return of […]
James Baldwin is counted among the greatest and most influential of American authors. He died in 1987 at the age of 65, but his novels and commentary on race, sexuality, class, bigotry, and social activism continue to influence and inform discussions on these issues today. Baldwin moved to France in 1948 at the age of […]
ADST has the world’s largest collection of U.S. diplomatic oral history. We have over 2000 oral histories at ADST.org – and it’s growing every day! But that’s not all we do. – Our web series of 700 “Moments in Diplomatic History” captures key historical events – and humorous aspects of diplomatic life. – The ADST.org website attracts over 70,000 monthly visitors – […]