Pieter de Geus

Pieter Boudewijn Richard de Geus (23 February 1929 – 5 May 2004) was a Dutch politician and a member of the Christian Democratic Appeal (CDA). From 1980 to 1981, he served as Minister of Defence in the First Van Agt cabinet.

Biography Pieter de Geus was born on 23 February 1929 in Rotterdam. He studied business economics at the Erasmus University Rotterdam. In 1946, he went into the Royal Netherlands Navy, studying at the Royal Naval College before finding employment at the Ministry of Defence, where he became Director-General of Economics and Finance in 1976.

In 1980, de Geus was picked to be Minister of Defence in the First Van Agt cabinet. As minister, he was a strong opponent of unilateral disarmament, and wrote a letter to the commanders of the Dutch Armed Forces on the desirability of nuclear armaments, for which the opposition accused him of infringing on officers' free speech rights. After his tenure as minister, he would serve in various other roles, including Director-General of Eurostat from 1982 to 1984 and a member of the board of directors of the Netherlands Organisation for Applied Scientific Research from 1984 to 1990. In 1998, he obtained his PhD from Leiden University on the topic of the New Guinea question.

Pieter de Geus died in Maassluis on 5 May 2004.