The Belgian statesman Paul Henri Spaak (1899-1972) was an architect of the Benelux association of his country with the Netherlands and Luxembourg and a supporter of Western European military, economic, and political unity during the Cold War.

Paul Henri Spaak was born near Brussels on Jan. 25, 1899. His father was the writer Paul Spaak. Interned by the Germans during World War I, the younger Spaak thereafter studied law in Brussels. He was sent to the Chamber of Deputies in 1932 and rose through a number of Cabinet positions to become Belgium's first Socialist prime minister, in 1938. Despite his early experiences, Spaak was during this period a believer in Belgian neutrality and worked to disassociate his government from the Locarno Pact.

The experiences of World War II decisively affected Spaak's orientation. During the war he served as foreign minister in the Belgian government-in-exile in London. Returning to Brussels in 1944, he continued...