“Easily Emotional” and “Always Inclined to Extremes.” Ambassador Herman van Roijen and Dutch Anxiety about American Anti-Communism, 1947–53

Abstract

Abstract This article presents anti-communism as a flexible, chameleon-like phenomenon that took on various guises in different countries, depending on their specific domestic circumstances. Historical scholarship remembers both the Netherlands and the United States as strongly anti-communist. However, in the 1950s Dutch officials contrasted their own supposedly sober-minded approach to communism with what they regarded as emotional responses to communism in America. Based on the private correspondence of Dutch ambassador in Washington, Herman van Roijen, and his interactions with The Hague, it is argued that the Red Scare in the United States (1947–54) unsettled Dutch policymakers and diplomats. The initial phase of the transatlantic alliance was complicated by disagreements between allies about geostrategy and budgetary questions, but also by anti-communism, which revealed a deep cultural divide between Europe and the United States and tested allied relations from the outset.