The hidden history of the United Nations

May 19, 2005

The history told about the defeat of Nazism and the founding of the
United Nations in the 1940s has become distorted. A false view of the
past is being used today to shape how we think about our future. The
military power of the victorious wartime allies is offered as a model
for running the world, while the UN's supposed utopianism is seen as
ineffective and irrelevant.

This is a travesty of the facts (see the boxed timeline). We are
taught that the UN began with the signing of the Charter in 1945. In
fact, that agreement was the culmination of a complex military and
political effort that began in 1941. Understanding the UN's wartime
origins provides a powerful and much-needed reminder that the UN is
not some liberal accessory but was created out of hard, realistic
political necessity.

The historical records show how Winston Churchill and Franklin D
Roosevelt created the United Nations to win the war both militarily
and politically, and to create the foundations for a lasting peace.

...rediscovering the role of the United Nations in war and peace is
doubly crucial. It can reinforce the importance of the modern United
Nations and strip away the spurious moral authority the present Anglo-
American alliance tries to claim from the wartime experience.
             - Dan Plesch, Open Democracy, May 18th

fyi-janet eaton
===========================================

http://www.opendemocracy.net/debates/article-6-28-2519.jsp#

The hidden history of the United Nations
Dan Plesch
18 - 5 - 2005
Dan Plesch rediscovers a forgotten story of the 1940s: how the United
Nations was forged, beat the Nazis and established a lasting peace.

The history told about the defeat of Nazism and the founding of the
United Nations in the 1940s has become distorted. A false view of the
past is being used today to shape how we think about our future. The
military power of the victorious wartime allies is offered as a model
for running the world, while the UN's supposed utopianism is seen as
ineffective and irrelevant.

This is a travesty of the facts (see the boxed timeline). We are
taught that the UN began with the signing of the Charter in 1945. In
fact, that agreement was the culmination of a complex military and
political effort that began in 1941. Understanding the UN's wartime
origins provides a powerful and much-needed reminder that the UN is
not some liberal accessory but was created out of hard, realistic
political necessity.

The historical records show how Winston Churchill and Franklin D
Roosevelt created the United Nations to win the war both militarily
and politically, and to create the foundations for a lasting peace.
Their first expression of Anglo-American policy was in the Atlantic
Charter of 1941; this included freedom from want, social security,
labour rights and disarmament as well as self-determination, free
trade and freedom of religion. Churchill himself remarked during the
height of the fighting in 1944 that the "United Nations is the only
hope of the world".

In the documentary records of the war years, countless references
demonstrate the UN's origin as a strategic engine of victory in the
second world war. The document that formalised the Nazi defeat in the
war includes the words: "This Act of Military Surrender is without
prejudice to, and will be superseded by, any general instrument of
surrender imposed by, or on behalf of, the United Nations on
Germany." President Truman broadcast on 8 May that: "General
Eisenhower informs me that the forces of Germany have surrendered to
the United Nations".

These references may seem odd today. But at the time, it was normal
to talk about the United Nations fighting the war. Major George B
Woods, chaplain to a "band of brothers" in the 82nd Airborne
Division, gave an address for the burial of the dead at Wobbelin
concentration camp. He explained that "these crimes were never
clearly brought to light until the armies of the United Nations
overran Germany".


A real coalition

The "United Nations" had been the official name for the coalition
fighting the axis powers since January 1942, when Roosevelt and
Churchill had led twenty-six nations, including the Soviet Union and
China, in a "Declaration by United Nations".

The declaration committed the twenty-six not to cut separate peace
deals with the Nazis and to subscribe to the principles of the
Atlantic Charter for the post-war world. The Charter provided the
political basis for countering Nazi ideology; it caught the
imagination of people around the world, including the young Nelson
Mandela and other anti-colonial activists.

The United Nations was a real entity, not a spin-doctored slogan
offering a gullible public the promise of world peace at the end of
the war. The allies fought the war as the United Nations and created
organisations in its name and on its foundation. The British Library
holds scores of wartime publications by or about the United Nations.
It was celebrated in music, prayer and exhibitions. Anthologies were
published of the exploits of "Heroes of the United Nations".

In Europe, General Eisenhower accepted the surrender of Fascist Italy
in September 1943, declaring: "Hostilities between the armed forces
of the United Nations and those of Italy terminate at once. All
Italians who now act to help eject the German aggressor from Italian
soil will have the assistance and the support of the United Nations."
He was soon sent to Britain to begin planning for D-Day. His orders
told him to do so in "conjunction with the other United Nations".

Eisenhower's broadcast to the troops aboard their landing craft
reminded them that "the United Nations have inflicted upon the
Germans great defeats, in open battle, man to man". Even the unit
shoulder-patch of his Supreme Headquarters Allied Expeditionary Force
included a light blue band representing the peace offered to the
enslaved peoples of Europe by the United Nations.

United Nations political bodies were also created during the war.
Their work can still be found in the records of the wartime
organisations and the earliest archives of the post-war UN. In 1942,
United Nations information boards with offices and organisations were
established in New York and London, producing documents on Nazi
atrocities and publicity about the Allied war effort and plans for
the peace. The New York office's mail was franked with the slogan
"United Nations: in War and Peace."

In 1943, the United Nations War Crimes Commission and the United
Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration were created. By
1944, planning for the post-war had gathered momentum and United
Nations conferences were organised at Dumbarton Oaks and Bretton
Woods to tackle the financial and political issues.

A Times headline reported that the economist John Maynard Keynes was
flying to America to create a "United Nations Bank". This is just one
example of thousands of wartime references to the United Nations in
the pages of the Times that are now available through its digital
archive.

In 1945, the United Nations Conference on International Organisation
opened in San Francisco, which the United States postal service
marked with a stamp and special commemorative envelopes.


A lost history

Today, the United Nations is all too often regarded as an unnecessary
bauble attached to the allied victory. At the time, the UN
organisation created in San Francisco was regarded as the grand
culmination of the war effort.

George W Bush and Tony Blair seek to persuade their citizens that
other nations are just too intransigent to deal with in their
campaign to make the world free and safe. They would have us believe
that Vladimir Putin and Jacques Chirac are tougher customers than
Joseph Stalin and Charles De Gaulle.

Roosevelt and Churchill had both experienced the first world war and
seen the failure of the League of Nations. They did not respond to
fascism with a doctrine of pre-emptive war and totalitarian neo-
liberalism. Quite the opposite: just three weeks after the surprise
attack upon Pearl Harbour, they set about creating an agenda that, in
modern terms, is left-wing social democracy. In doing so, they knew
that hard bargaining and unpleasant compromise might be necessary.
They understood that cooperation was essential to survival: a lesson
learnt even before the invention of the atomic bomb. Today, that
lesson has almost been forgotten in America and Britain - though not
elsewhere.

Reasserting the reality that the United Nations is a realist
necessity rather than a liberal accessory becomes much easier once we
remember that it was to the United Nations that the Nazis
surrendered.

Why has this history been lost? I have no clear answer, but I can
offer some suggestions. The new UN organisation wanted a clean start
unencumbered by the wartime experience. The many new nations created
as the British and French empires collapsed regarded the UN as a new
organisation, whose wartime origins seemed of little relevance.
Everyone knew the UN had been created out of the ashes of the war;
there was no need to labour the point.

More importantly, the creation of images of competing evil empires in
the cold war meant that neither right nor left wanted to remember
that they fought the axis together. American conservatives in
particular, who had opposed US involvement in the second world war
and never supported the UN, have been keen to eradicate all reference
to the Democrat Roosevelt's work. Nowadays, journalists assigned to
prepare anniversary coverage may come across the occasional reference
to the United Nations and omit it as an oddity - or even a mistake.

In 2005, as the sixtieth anniversaries of the end of the second world
war and the signing of the UN Charter are commemorated, rediscovering
the role of the United Nations in war and peace is doubly crucial. It
can reinforce the importance of the modern United Nations and strip
away the spurious moral authority the present Anglo-American alliance
tries to claim from the wartime experience.

The signing of the UN Charter in 1945: a timeline

The UN Charter, Article 3, records that the original members of the
UN includes those states that had signed the "Declaration by United
Nations" in Washington on 1 January 1942.

    * 14 August 1941: Churchill and Roosevelt issue the Atlantic
Charter of political objectives for the post-war world. These include
freedom from want, social security, labour rights, disarmament, self-
determination, freedom of religion, free trade and a new
international security system

    * 1 January 1942: Declaration by United Nations. Twenty-six
nations agree to make no separate peace with the axis of Germany,
Japan and Italy, and subscribe to the Atlantic Charter

    * 18 March 1942: General Douglas MacArthur takes command of
United Nations forces in southwest Asia

    * 14 June 1942: United States flag day becomes United Nations
flag day in the US, the British Empire and Commonwealth, and other
states. A great parade at Buckingham Palace for United Nations Day

    * 1942: United Nations Information Board creates an organisation
that opens offices in New York (and in London in 1943)

    * December 1942: United Nations statement about Nazi atrocities
against Jews in Poland

    * 14 June 1943: United Nations flag day parades. US issues stamp
of "Nations United" with "United Nations" first day covers

    * September 1943: Italy surrenders to General Dwight D Eisenhower
acting for the United Nations

    * October 1943: United Nations War Crimes Commission created

    * November 1943: Council of the United Nations Relief and
Rehabilation Administration meets in Atlantic City, US

    * 1944: United Nations conferences create World Bank and
financial system at Bretton Woods, and set framework for new
international organisation at Dumbarton Oaks

    * February 1944: Eisenhower ordered to liberate Europe with the
other United Nations

    * 1944: Bulgaria, Hungary and Romania surrender, agreeing to stop
aggression against United Nations; Soviet generals accept their
surrenders on behalf of the United Nations

    * 1944: world leaders (Dwight D Eisenhower, Franklin D Roosevelt
and Winston Churchill) make speeches and broadcasts describing the
victories and great armies of the United Nations

    * April 1945: United Nations conference on international
organisation opens in San Francisco; US issues commemorative stamp

    * May 1945: Nazis surrender and accept the authority of the
United Nations over Germany in Article IV of the surrender document

    * 26 June1945: United Nations Charter signed; enters into force
24 October.

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