V o L u m e I : a d

Indochina, advising Truman to make what proved to be a fateful commit-

ment of American assistance to anti-Viet Minh forces in 1950. Acheson all

but ignored Africa and Latin America, mainly because neither region was as

yet on the front lines of the Cold War. Like those who preceded him, Ache-

son viewed Britain as an indispensable American ally and partner.

A primary target of Republican Senator Joseph McCarthy’s anticom-

munist witch hunt, Acheson was lambasted for being friendly with alleged

spy Alger Hiss, “losing” China to communism, and being unable to end the

Korean War, which Acheson’s enemies wrongly believed he provoked by

publicly excluding it from America’s “defense perimeter” in a January 1950

speech. Acheson also provided fodder for other Republicans, namely

Richard M. Nixon, who in 1952 derided Democratic presidential nominee

Adlai Stevenson for having graduated from “Dean Acheson’s College of

Cowardly Communist Containment.”

Acheson retired from public life in 1953 but was not disengaged from

public policy. He soon became the main Democratic critic of President

Dwight D. Eisenhower’s foreign policy. Acheson regarded NSC-68, which

advocated the strengthening of conventional military forces to provide

options other than nuclear war, as the foreign policy bible for the Cold War

era. When the Eisenhower administration committed itself to a policy of

massive retaliation that emphasized nuclear responses over conventional

responses to crises, the former secretary of state reacted with utter disbelief

to what he termed “defense on the cheap.”

In the 1960s, Acheson returned to public life as the head of NATO task

forces, special envoy, diplomatic troubleshooter, and foreign policy advisor

for Presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson. Acheson was

noted for his hawkish advice to Kennedy during the Cuban Missile Crisis of

1962. Acheson died of a heart attack on 12 October 1971 in Sandy Spring,

Maryland.

Caryn E. Neumann

See also

Containment Policy; Cuban Missile Crisis; Eisenhower, Dwight David; Hiss, Alger;

Indochina War; Kennan, George Frost; Korean War; Lend-Lease; Marshall

Plan; McCarthy, Joseph Raymond; National Security Council Report NSC-68;

North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Origins and Formation of; Truman, Harry S.;

Truman Doctrine; United Kingdom; United Nations

References

Acheson, Dean. Present at the Creation: My Years at the State Department. New York:

Norton, 1969.

Brinkley, Douglas. Dean Acheson: The Cold War Years, 1953–71. New Haven, CT: Yale

University Press, 1992.

Chace, James. Acheson: The Secretary of State Who Created the American World. New York:

Simon and Schuster, 1998.

McNay, John T. Acheson and Empire: The British Accent in American Foreign Policy.

Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2001.

56

Acheson, Dean Gooderham

In the 1960s,

Acheson returned 

to public life as the

head of NATO task

forces, special envoy,

diplomatic trouble-

shooter, and foreign

policy advisor for

Presidents John F.

Kennedy and

Lyndon B. Johnson.

---

Irish politician and Sinn Féin party leader in Northern Ireland. Born on

6 October 1948 in Belfast, Northern Ireland, Gerard “Gerry” Adams Jr. left

school early and worked as a bartender. In 1964, he joined Sinn Féin, the

political arm of the Irish Republican Army (IRA). Although Adams has always

denied being a member of the IRA, British and Irish official sources suggest

otherwise. Incarcerated in 1972 under the Special Powers Act, he was set free

for peace talks that same year. However, he was imprisoned again from 1973

to 1977 and for a brief period in 1978.

After his release from prison in 1978, Adams assumed the vice presi-

dency of Sinn Féin. As early as 1979, he tried to convince his party to give up

violence and turn to political action. In 1983, the year he was elected to the

House of Commons, he and the northern cadres took control of the republi-

can movement. As the new president of Sinn Féin, Adams ended the party’s

policy of abstention so that party representatives could be seated in Parlia-

ment. A skillful political tactician, Adams has since managed to steer his fol-

lowers toward a peaceful solution to the Northern Ireland conflict without

causing the party to break apart. Although by no means an uncontroversial

figure, he is viewed as one of the major engineers of the 1998 Good Friday

Agreement.

Matthias Trefs

See also

Ireland, Northern; Ireland, Republic of; Irish Republican Army; Paisley, Ian; Sinn

Féin; United Kingdom

References

Adams, Gerry. Before the Dawn: An Autobiography. London: Heinemann, 1996.

Moloney, Ed. A Secret History of the IRA. New York: Norton, 2002.

Sharrock, David, and Mark Devenport. Man of War, Man of Peace? The Unauthorized

Biography of Gerry Adams. London: Macmillan, 1997.

German politician, mayor of Köln (Cologne) from 1917 to 1933, chancellor of

the Prussian State Council from 1922 to 1933, and first chancellor of the Fed-

eral Republic of Germany (FRG, West Germany) from 1949 to 1963. Born

5 January 1876 in Köln, Konrad Adenauer studied law in Freiburg, Munich,

and Bonn. In 1897 he began his long career in government service in the

Prussian justice administration before spending a brief time as an attorney in

private practice. Sponsored by the Catholic Center Party, he was elected to

the Köln city council in 1906; by 1909, he had become deputy lord mayor of

the city. After being assigned oversight for Köln’s food supplies from 1914 to

Adenauer, Konrad

57

Adams, Gerard, Jr.

(1948–)

Adenauer, Konrad

(1876–1967)

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