Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg

Arthur Hendrick Vandenberg 1884–1951, American politician, b. Grand Rapids, Mich. He was editor and publisher of the Grand Rapids Herald from 1906 to 1928, when he was appointed to fill a U.S. Senate vacancy. He won election to the seat in the same year. In the upper house he became an influential Republican leader. Before World War II he was generally considered an isolationist, but by 1945 his views on foreign affairs had changed, and he became one of the chief proponents of a bipartisan foreign policy. He served as U.S. delegate to the San Francisco United Nations Conference in 1945 and as a delegate to the General Assembly of the United Nations (1946). As chairman of the Senate Committee on Foreign Affairs (1947–49), Vandenberg was the leading proponent of bipartisan support for President Truman's foreign policy. He was instrumental in securing Senate approval of the Marshall Plan and the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. He wrote several studies about Alexander Hamilton.

Bibliography: See The Private Papers of Senator Vandenberg (ed. by A. H. Vandenberg, Jr., and J. A. Morris, 1952); biography by C. D. Tompkins (1970).