John Foster Dulles, US Secretary of State, Jan 1953-Apr 1959, and Christian Archibald Herter, US Under Secretary of State, 1957- 1959 and US Secretary of State, Apr 1959-Jan 1961.

The Papers of John Foster Dulles and of Christian A Herter, 1953-1961 are microfilmed copies of telephone conversations, correspondence, memoranda, working papers, position papers and speeches of John Foster Dulles during his tenure as US Secretary of State, 1953-1959, and of Christian Archibald Herter during his tenure as US Under Secretary of State, 1953-1959 and Secretary of State, 1959-1961. Born in Washington, DC, on 25 Feb 1888, John Foster Dulles studied law and politics at Princeton University, the Sorbonne, Paris, the University of Pennsylvania, John's Hopkins University, and Harvard University. He served on the Counsel to the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, Versailles, 1918-1919. In 1945 he was a member of the US Delegation to the San Francisco Conference on World Organization (later the United Nations), and became a permanent delegate to the UN, 1946-1950. After the 1952 election campaign, in which Dulles attacked Democratic foreign policy as ineffective, President-elect Dwight David Eisenhower named Dulles as his Secretary of State. Together, Eisenhower and Dulles pursued a policy of containment towards the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. Their 'New Look' defence policy sought to project a credible deterrent against communism through a combination of fiscal moderation, heavy reliance on nuclear weapons and a foreign policy based on threats of 'massive retaliation' in the event of a Soviet first-strike. Christian Archibald Herter was born in Paris, France, 28 Mar 1895. He served as an attaché to the American Embassy in Berlin, 1916-1917 and Secretary of the American Commission to Negotiate Peace, Versailles, 1918-1919. From 1929-1930 Herter was a lecturer in international politics at Harvard University. In 1957, he became Under Secretary of State and, on Dulles's death in 1959, became Secretary of State for the remainder of the Eisenhower administration.US State Department telephone conversations and correspondence, excluding those with the President, were routinely monitored by personal assistants who took shorthand notes on their content. Later, these personal assistants prepared memoranda based on the shorthand notes. Dulles's staff used these memoranda to ensure that any required action resulting from the telephone conversations and correspondence was taken. Thus, the purpose of these memoranda was purely operational. Consequently, while Dulles's personal assistants tried to be accurate and complete in their note- taking, they were not concerned about nuance or detail. The transcribers often were not familiar with the subject matter and were not trying to record history. After serving their operational purpose, the memoranda were filed and kept only as a convenient reference of the time and date of various messages. US State Department correspondence with the President, however, was rarely monitored. Therefore, the memoranda of this material originated in the Secretary of State himself. He usually dictated them, occasionally through his Special Assistants, Roderic O'Connor and John Hanes.