West European political leader Joseph Luns (born 1911) played an essential role among European foreign policy figures in creating and maintaining the alliance and community structures of the post-World War II era. His most visible position was as secretary-general of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) from 1971 until 1984.

Born on August 28, 1911, in Rotterdam, The Netherlands, Joseph Marie Antoine Hubert Luns grew up in a family with six children and a father who was a painter, teacher, author of art books, and finally a museum director. Luns moved to Amsterdam at a young age and was educated in a Roman Catholic high school, St. Ignatius College in Amsterdam, as well as in the Institut St. Louis in Brussels, Belgium. He read law at the University of Leyden and the University of Amsterdam, taking his degree at the latter school in 1937. He subsequently took courses at the London School of Economics...