Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training

Social & Behavioral Sciences: Politcal Science

Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training [http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/collections/diplomacy/index.html] - presents a window into the lives of American diplomats. Transcripts of interviews with U.S. diplomatic personnel capture their experiences, motivations, critiques, personal analyses, and private thoughts. These elements are crucial to understanding the full story of how a structure of stable relationships that maintained world peace and protected U.S. interests and values was built.

The interviews in the collection are mostly with Foreign Service Officers but there also are some with political appointees and other officials. While some 1920s-, 1930s-, and World-War-II-era diplomacy is covered, most of the interviews involve post-World-War-II diplomacy, from the late 1940s to the 1990s. This collection captures the post-World-War-II period in vivid terms and intimate detail, documenting the way that U.S. diplomacy defends the United States and its interests in a challenging world. The narratives span the major diplomatic crises and issues that faced the United States during the second half of the 20th century and, as new interviews are added, will include developments in the 21st century. The 1,301 transcripts of oral history interviews were donated by the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training (ADST), a private, nonprofit organization.

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