Domesticity, Rearmament, and the Limits of U.S. Public Diplomacy in the Netherlands during the Early Cold War

By the early 1950s, Western rearmament had emerged as a central U.S. foreign policy goal. However, many West European governments were reluctant to bear the costs of rearmament at a time when economic reconstruction and social welfare were still urgently needed. Perhaps nowhere was this resistance as entrenched as in the Netherlands, where concern over defense expenditure was most pronounced among Dutch housewives, a traditionally prominent part of Dutch society. An analysis of this failed effort underscores the limits of U.S. cultural influence in other Western societies during the early Cold War.