The Netherlands Country Reader Table of Contents
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THE NETHERLANDS COUNTRY READER TABLE OF CONTENTS Mary Seymour Olmsted 1946-1949 Commercial Officer, Amsterdam Slator Clay Blackiston, Jr. 194 -1949 Political Officer, Amsterdam Herman Kleine 1949 Marshall Plan Mission to the Netherlands, The Hague (illiam C. Trimble 1951-1954 Political Counselor, The Hague Morton A. Bach 1952-1955 ,conomic Officer, The Hague C. -ray Bream 1954-1956 ,conomic Officer, Amsterdam .avid .ean 1954-1956 Consular Officer, 0otterdam Nancy Ostrander 1954-1956 Code Clerk, The Hague (illiam B. .unham 1956-1961 Political Section Chief, The Hague 0obert 2. Nichols 195 Information Officer, 4SIS, Amsterdam Peter J. Skoufis 1958-1961 Administrative Officer, The Hague Kathryn Clark-Bourne 1959-1961 Consular Officer, 0otterdam 2ambert Heyniger 1961-1962 Political Officer, The Hague Samuel .e Palma 1961-1964 Political Section, The Hague 6rancis M. Kinnelly 1962-1963 Commercial Officer, The Hague 1963-1964 Consular Officer, 0otterdam 6isher Ho8e 1962-1965 .eputy Chief of Mission, The Hague Manuel Abrams 1962-1966 ,conomic Counselor, The Hague Margaret 2. Plunkett 1962-196 2abor Attach:, The Hague (illiam N. Turpin 1963-1964 ,conomic Officer, The Hague .onald 0. Norland 1964-1969 Political Officer, The Hague ,mmerson M. Bro8n 1966-19 1 ,conomic Counselor, The Hague Thomas J. .unnigan 1969-19 2 Political Counselor, The Hague J. (illiam Middendorf, II 1969-19 3 Ambassador, Netherlands ,lden B. ,rickson 19 1-19 4 Consul -eneral, 0otterdam ,ugene M. Braderman 19 1-19 4 Political Officer, Amsterdam 0ay ,. Jones 19 1-19 2 Secretary, The Hague (ayne 2eininger 19 4-19 6 Consular / Administrative Officer, 0otterdam Martin Van Heuven 1932-194 Childhood, 4trecht 19 5-19 8 Political Counselor, The Hague ,lizabeth Ann Bro8n 19 5-19 9 .eputy Chief of Mission, The Hague Victor 2. Stier 19 5-19 9 Public Affairs Officer, 4SIS, The Hague 0obert McCloskey 19 6-19 8 Ambassador, Netherlands (illiam V.P. Ne8lin 19 -19 9 Office of Benelux Affairs, (ashington, .C Samuel Vick Smith 19 8-1981 ,conomic / Commercial Officer, Amsterdam Thomas J. .unnigan 19 8-1981 .eputy Chief of Mission, The Hague Jack A. Sulser 19 8-1982 Consul -eneral, 0otterdam (illiam J. .yess 1981-1983 Ambassador, Netherlands 2e8is .. Junior 1982-1986 Consul -eneral, 0otterdam Arthur H. Hughes 1983-1986 .eputy Chief of Mission, The Hague Johnny Young 1985-1988 Counselor for Administration, The Hague 2eonardo M. (illiams 198 -1991 Information Officer, 4SIS, The Hague John Allen Cushing 1991-1992 Political Officer, The Hague Arthur S. Berger 1991-1995 Public Affairs Officer, 4SIS, The Hague (illiam P. Pope 1996-1999 .eputy Chief of Mission, The Hague MARY SEYMOUR OLMSTED Commercial Officer Amsterdam (1 46-1 4 ) Ambassador Mary Seymour Olmsted was born in Duluth, Minnesota and raised in Florida. She received a bachelor‘s degree in economics from Mount Holyo e College and received a master‘s degree from Columbia University. Ambassador Olmsted‘s Foreign Service career included positions in India, Iceland, Austria, The Netherlands, and Washington, DC, and an ambassadorship to Papua New )uinea. She was interviewed by Charles Stuart Kennedy on three occasions in 1,,2. ./ And then you moved on to Amsterdam, and you were there from 012 to 01,. O2MST,.: Yes. ./ What were you doing in Amsterdam3 O2MST,.: Initially I 8as sent to the commercial section, and I 8as doing reporting on the recovery of the consular district follo8ing the 8ar. That 8as very interesting, I enAoyed it. ./ What was the economic situation that you were dealing with then3 O2MST,.: (ell, it 8as still very much a 8artime situation. I arrived there in November of 1946, and the 8inter that 8as just beginning then, that harsh 8inter after the end of the 8ar. ./ Really was one of the worst winters Europe has had, and certainly right at the wrong time. O2MST,.: Absolutely, and there 8as a great deal of suffering and deprivation. ,ven 8hen they 8ere able to get coal, they couldnBt transport it around because it usually 8ent by canal barge and the canals froze. Therefore the city 8as cold and the people 8ere hungry, food 8as still very strictly rationed. And, even though I had extra rations, it still 8asnBt very luxurious eating. ./ How did you do your wor 3 I mean things were still falling apart, how does one wor as an economic reporting officer in a situation li e that3 O2MST,.: (ell, one goes out and talks to the .utch people. I didnBt speak very much .utch, but ,nglish 8as very 8idely spoken, and IBd talk to them about their problems and 8hat they 8ere doing. There 8ere some government statistics coming out, not a lot but there 8ere some and, of course, I used those to buttress 8hat I 8as reporting. I managed to travel around a fair amount to see for myself 8hat 8as going on. I made one trip to Arnhem and NiAmegen close to the -erman border, the areas that had been terribly, terribly bombed. ./ This is the place where they had a ma6or battle in an attempt to by7pass the )erman army and failed. O2MST,.: Yes, and you could see the rubble for miles and miles piled up along the road as you approached either of those places that slo8ly 8ere rebuilding. And, of course, I heard a lot of 8ar stories and the terrible times they had there. ./ Did you get a feel for how the Dutch were responding to the rebuilding, and the reconstruction3 One thin s of them as being a commercially motivated nation. Did they seem to be pulling up faster than maybe some of the others because of this3 O2MST,.: It 8as very hard for me to make comparison 8ith other countries because I simply 8asnBt doing that much traveling, and 8hen I 8as I 8as just a tourist. The .utch not only had the problem of rebuilding, and reconstruction after the 8ar, they also had the problem of the Netherlands ,ast Indies. And as the situation 8as falling apart in the ,ast Indies, refugees 8ere coming back in very considerable numbers. And, the .utch had both the psychological problem of adAusting to the loss of the Indies, and also the physical and financial problem of absorbing these refugees, and this added to their problems. ./ The Marshall Plan had not yet geared up, or did it3 O2MST,.: It did a little bit later, but the at the time I 8ent there it 8asnBt even thought of. ./ We weren0t doing much, we were sort of unhappy about what was happening in the Dutch East Indies, and we didn0t really want to support the Dutch. What did the Dutch feel about Americans3 O2MST,.: The .utch felt the Americans 8ere doing far too much in supporting the Indonesians. Initially, 8hen I 8ent there, the .utch felt terribly grateful to us but I could feel the sentiments changing some8hat as I stayed, and this situation developed. ./ How were relations with the embassy3 Here0s Amsterdam that0s really is a ma6or city, and The Hague off to one side, and economically, of course, it was even probably more so. Were there any problems with the economic section at the embassy3 O2MST,.: I donBt remember any very serious problems. (e kept in fairly close contact. You could get to The Hague from Amsterdam in an hour, and 8e did a certain amount of running back and forth to discuss things, and of course 8e had the telephones, so 8e 8ere in pretty close contact. The man 8ho 8as the ,conomic Counselor in The Hague had earlier served in Amsterdam, so he had a certain number of contacts 8hich probably made things a little bit smoother than they might have been other8ise. ./ I would thin there would be a built in problem there in the system by having the capital off to one side. O2MST,.: I think it probably became more of a problem later on, but at the time I 8as there there 8as so much reporting that needed to be done, so many things that 8e needed to kno8, that there 8asnBt the competition that might have developed later on. ./ With the reporting, did you have the feeling that these reports were being read and used3 8ecause obviously these later were going to be cran ed into the Marshall Plan, all this reporting. But at the time what was your sense for the use of these economic reports. O2MST,.: I did not particularly have the feeling that they 8ere being ignored. No8, I 8onBt say that I felt that the .epartment 8as 8aiting breathlessly for each one that arrived. I thought they 8ere found useful. ./ It was a period when things had changed so much that we had to rebuild our entire information stoc pile, nowledge of what was happening in Europe. Just to get a feel again, did you find that because things were changing, a sort of an e:citing time, or was it fun3 O2MST,.: In some 8ays it 8as depressing. There 8as real suffering there and 8e got little tastes of it. Our Consulate -eneral building 8as taken over from the -ermans -- it had been the -erman headCuarters in Amsterdam -- and it 8as Cuite cold, and our local employees 8ould come to 8ork and you see they 8ere just shivering, and every time the 8ind changed half of them 8ould be out 8ith colds or the flu. In a small office like that, you get to kno8 the locals pretty 8ell, and 8e felt their suffering and that did have an impact on us. ./ Did you get any feel, at that time, about the changing attitude toward the Soviet Union3 Obviously in Amsterdam this wasn0t your main fi:, but also within the Foreign Service.