The United Nations

Wartime Sense of Purpose

The United Nations began with the London Declaration of June 12, 1941, when various nationalities had a sense of purpose struggling against a common enemy: Hitler's Germany. They declared that "the only true basis of enduring peace is the willing cooperation of free peoples in a world in which, relieved of the menace of aggression, all may enjoy economic and social security." Signing the London Declaration on June 12, 1941 were Britain, Canada, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa and the exiled governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Yugoslavia. Charles deGaulle, in exile from France, also signed.

The United States was not yet in the war. After Germany invaded the Soviet Union and after the U.S. entered World War II, the above powers were joined by the U.S. and the Soviet Union in what was called the "Declaration by United Nations," signed in Washington on January 1, 1942. Each government pledged "to employ its full resources, military or economic" to defeat Germany, Japan and Italy. They agreed that none was to make a separate peace with the enemy. A number of Latin American nations joined the group, as did Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and some smaller African states.

At their Teheran conference in late 1943, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed the possibility of a United Nations trusteeship for France's colony of Indochina (including Vietnam). The Indochinese were to be included among the "free peoples" spoken of in the London declaration but after a wait of twenty or thirty years. In deference to Churchill a UN trusteeship for India was not discussed.

In his campaign for re-election in 1944, Roosevelt argued that the United Nations had to be able to commit people to military action, "to keep the peace by force, if necessary" rather than wait for consultations, discussions and debates. He likened the latter to a local police force calling a town meeting before stopping a burglary. "It is clear," he said, "that if the world organization is to have any reality at all, our American representative must be endowed in advance by the people themselves, by constitutional means through their representatives in the Congress, with authority to act."

Beginning in September 1944, at the Dumbarton Oaks mansion in Washington D.C., representatives of the Soviet Union, Britain, the U.S. and China agreed on the structure of the UN. The purpose of the United Nations, it was declared, would be:

1. To maintain international peace and security; and to that end to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means adjustment or settlement of international disputes which may lead to a breach of the peace;

2. To develop friendly relations among nations and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

3. To achieve international cooperation in the solution of international economic, social and other humanitarian problems; and

4. To afford a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the achievement of these common ends.

The principles by which this was to be realized were:

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states.

2. All members of the Organization undertake, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership in the Organization, to fulfill the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the Charter.

3. All members of the Organization shall settle their disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security are not endangered.

At the Yalta conference in February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin -- the Big Three -- declared their resolve to establish the UN, with Roosevelt and Churchill both agreeing that the Ukraine and Byelorussia (republics within the Soviet Union) would be separate member states with their own vote. The Big Three agreed to the time and place of a founding meeting of the United Nations and that the UN would be led or dominated by the five major allied powers as permanent members of a Security Council -- the U.S., Soviet Union, Britain, China, and France. The question arose about some Latin American nations joining. Stalin asked how the Soviet Union could build world security with nations that had been hostile to the Soviet Union. Churchill commented about nations that had been waiting "to see who would win," and Roosevelt apologized to Stalin for having prematurely promised these nations UN membership. He added that he was doing what he could to encourage them to declare war on Germany and that they could help write the UN Charter and become initial members when they signed the UN declaration. Stalin agreed. The question arose of a conference to discuss "territorial trusteeship and dependent areas" -- in other words colonialism. Churchill became enraged, stating that as long as he was Prime Minister he would "not yield one scrap" of Britain's heritage. He was placated when the U.S. Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius, showed him a report stating that the United States opposed putting any colony into an arrangement without the consent of the colonial power involved.

please continue

to navigation links at the top