Eilts, Hermann F.
In the Foreign Service from 1947 to 1979, HERMANN EILTS served in Iran, Saudi Arabia, Aden, Yemen, Iraq, Washington, London, and Libya. He was the U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia (1965–70) and deputy commandant and diplomatic advisor at the Army War College (1970–73). As ambassador to Egypt (1973–79), he was intimately involved in drafting and negotiating the Camp David Accords. He served on U.S. delegations to the United Nations, NATO, and international conferences and received numerous awards and university honors.
After retiring from the Foreign Service in 1979, Ambassador Eilts founded and directed Boston University’s Center for International Relations and chaired both the international relations and political science departments. Always a passionate scholar of early American diplomatic history regarding the Middle East, he continued to lecture and write until his death in 2006.
Hermann Frederick Eilts was born in Germany in 1922 and immigrated with his parents to the United States in 1926. A graduate of Ursinus College (B.A., 1942) and the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University (MA with distinction, 1947), with diplomas from the National War College (1961–1962) and the Army War College (1972), Eilts earned the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, and seven European and North African campaign stars for military service in World War II.
The ADST-DACOR Diplomats and Diplomacy Series has now reached fifty volumes with the publication of Early American Diplomacy in the Near and Far East by the late Ambassador Hermann F. Eilts, a leading twentieth-century diplomat and scholar.
From the inception of the republic to the Civil War, the United States eschewed political...