Despite the League’s failure to prevent World War II, it did provide a blueprint for another international peacekeeping organization. As Stewart M. Patrick, a senior fellow in global governance, stated in an interview with Time Magazine:

“The League of Nations is significant because, even though it failed, it was the first time a bunch of sovereign nations got together and said, ‘We’re sovereign nations, but we’re going to try to combine our power to try to keep the peace.’ It also had some modest successes particularly dealing with certain territorial disputes. The League was not in vain if you consider that there were lessons learned from its failings.”

Preparations for a United Nations, 1942-1945

The outbreak of World War II in 1939 generated a desire among the Allied nations to create a new international body that would be more adequately equipped to maintain international peace in the future. The concept of international peace and security laid out in the UN Charter began to develop with the ideas expressed in the Declaration of St. James Palace and the Atlantic Charter of 1941, both of which expressed the need for global cooperation to ensure peace. Subsequent meetings with nations at war with Germany and Japan continued throughout the conflict at Moscow, Tehran, Dumbarton Oaks, and Yalta, culminating with the creation of the United Nations at the San Francisco Conference in April 1945. 

On June 12, 1941, the representatives of Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa, General de Gaulle of France, and the exiled governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Poland met at the historic St. James Palace. During the meeting they signed a declaration which stated, in part:

“The only true basis of enduring peace is the willing co-operation of free peoples in a world in which, relieved of the menace of aggression, all may enjoy economic and social security; and that it is their intention to work together, and with other free peoples, both in war and peace to this end.”

Two months later, on August 14, 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill issued a joint declaration, known as the Atlantic Charter, following a meeting of the two heads of government in Newfoundland. In addition to outlining US and British war aims, the charter also provided a vision for a postwar world order. It specifically assured that both countries shared “certain common principles in the national politics of their respective countries on which they base their hopes for a better future for the world.” This statement also included clauses pertaining to equal trade opportunities, free communications, economic and social cooperation, and collective security against aggression. The eighth paragraph of the document specifically referred to the future “establishment of a wider and permanent system of security.” 

According to Philips Bradley, “the fact that the leaders of the United States and Great Britain subscribed to these principles jointly gave the Atlantic Charter an importance far beyond a simple personal declaration” since the United States affirmed its commitment to a “workable world security system,” when it was not yet at war. 

On January 1, 1942, twenty-six countries, including the United States, Great Britain, China, and the Soviet Union agreed to the principles outlined in the Atlantic Charter in a document which became known as the Declaration of the United Nations or the Declaration by United Nations. The Declaration by United Nations contained the first official use of the term “United Nations,” a phrase coined by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Between 1942 and 1945, 21 other countries signed the document. As planning for the 1945 San Francisco Conference began, only states which had declared war on Germany and Japan prior to March 1945 and subscribed to the United Nations Declaration were invited to take part. Thus, the Declaration was a crucial step in securing global support for the founding of a new postwar international organization designed to promote peace.

Negotiations on the future international organization continued at Moscow, Tehran, and Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, DC, between 1943 and 1944. At the close of the Moscow Conference, held in the fall of 1943, the foreign ministers of the United States, Russia, Great Britain, and China issued a statement recognizing:

“the necessity of establishing at the earliest practicable date a general international organization, based on the principle of sovereign equality of all peace-loving States, and open to membership by all such States, large and small for the maintenance of international peace and security.”

This was the first time the idea of establishing an international organization to keep peace after the end of World War II was explicitly expressed in an official document. Shortly thereafter, all four countries appointed national committees composed of experts that separately worked on drafting a charter for the future organization. Within a year, representatives of the United States, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and China met at the Dumbarton Oaks estate in Washington, DC and issued the Dumbarton Oaks Declaration, a detailed blueprint which became the framework for the San Francisco Charter.

Negotiations concerning the future United Nations continued at the Yalta Conference in February 1945. On February 11, 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin, together with their foreign ministers and chiefs of staff, declared:

“We are resolved upon the earliest possible establishment with our Allies of a general international organization to maintain peace and security. We believe that this is essential, both to prevent aggression and to remove the political, economic, and social causes of war through the close and continuing collaboration of all peace-loving peoples.”

At Yalta, “the Big Three” also agreed that “a Conference of the United Nations should be called to meet at San Francisco in the United States on 25^th April, 1945, to prepare the charter of such an organization,” proposed a Security Council for the future United Nations, and outlined voting procedures. 

Invitations for the San Francisco Conference were sent out on March 5, 1945. With the death of President Roosevelt on April 12, 1945, there was fear that the conference might be postponed. President Truman, however, decided to carry out all the arrangements already put in place, and the conference opened two weeks later.

San Francisco Conference 1945

The goal of the San Francisco Conference, formally known as The United Nations Conference on International Organization, was to set the foundations and establish a framework for the United Nations. There were 850 delegates from 50 countries at the Conference—26 of which had signed the original 1942 Declaration of the United Nations. At the time of the conference, there was no internationally recognized Polish Government, therefore, despite being one of the original signatories of the Declaration of United Nations, Poland did not have a representative at the conference. The country was later admitted and allowed to be considered an original member, bringing the total number of founding member states to 51. 

To accomplish the task of creating a founding charter for the United Nations, work at the San Francisco Conference was organized into four committees. The Conference in Plenary Session was the highest body, which was in charge of the final voting and adoption of the text of the Charter of the United Nations. Below, there were four main committees: The Steering Committee dealt with questions regarding policy and procedure; the Executive Committee prepared recommendations for the Steering Committee; the Coordination Committee assisted the Executive Committee, and the Credentials Committee verified the credentials of all delegates. The foreign ministers of the four Allied sponsors, US Secretary of State Edward Reilly Stettinius, Jr., Anthony Eden of Great Britain, Vyacheslav Mikhaylovich Molotov of the USSR, and T.V. Soong of China, took turns acting as chairman of the plenary meetings. 

According to Bradley, one of the major issues facing delegates “arose out of the difficulty of reconciling the theory of international law-that all nations are equal- with the facts of international life- that some are more powerful and influential than others.” On the one hand, more powerful countries recognized that they would have more responsibility for supplying military forces for keeping the peace and wanted to have significant input about when, where, and how they would use their resources when called to do so. Closely related, was the prevalent belief among larger nations that they should have the right to veto the use of international forces against themselves. On the other hand, smaller nations insisted that they were sovereign equivalents to larger nations and should have an equal say in peacekeeping missions.

To solve this issue, The Charter of the United Nations created a General Assembly of all member states, each with one vote, which acts as “a world legislature without lawmaking power.” The Charter also created an executive organ called the Security Council, with five permanent and six non-permanent, rotating members. The five permanent members included China, France, the United States, the Soviet Union, and Great Britain—all of which have veto power. Today, the five original permanent members remain the same, but as the UN expanded the number of non-permanent members to ten.

The Security Council was designed to be the main body responsible for the maintenance of international peace and security and, under the Charter of the United Nations, all member states are obligated to comply with Security Council decisions. The Charter also established a Military Staff Committee attached to the Security Council, intended to direct the use of armed forces on behalf of the United Nations, a significant component missing from the League of Nations. 

The other main governing body established at San Francisco was the International Court of Justice, which is responsible for settling, “in accordance with international law, legal disputes submitted to it by States and to give advisory opinions on legal questions referred to it by authorized United Nations organs and specialized agencies.” 

Delegates to the San Francisco Conference also had to deal with other issues including how to incorporate regional and bilateral treaties into the new international organization and questions regarding what should be done with former enemy colonies and “dependent peoples,” who had been under the supervision of one of the victor nations. How member states would cooperate and compromise on economic and social matters also had to be addressed. To address these issues, the Charter created an 18-member Economic and Security Council, a Trusteeship Council to oversee colonial territories, and a Secretariat under a Secretary General. 

At the end of the San Francisco Conference, on June 25, 1945, the Charter was unanimously adopted at the San Francisco Opera House. The next day, it was signed at the Herbst Theater auditorium of the Veterans War Memorial. The United Nations, however, did not come into existence until October 24, 1945 (now annually observed as United Nations Day), when the governments of China, France, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States and a majority of the other signatory states had ratified the Charter. 

After four years of planning, the United Nations materialized, marking a momentous step in development of peaceful international relations. This “great alliance,” in Roosevelt’s words, would guarantee “a true peace based on the freedom of man.” Utilizing the effective aspects of the League of Nations and adapting the features that did not work, the Allied nations successfully established a lasting organization to promote peace, justice, and better living for all humanity.