The UNITED NATIONS
1945-1990
The Atlantic Charter
• Meeting between Winston Churchill (UK) and Franklin D Roosevelt (USA) 9-12
August 1941. The USA was providing aid to Britain and not at war. They had a
cash and carry policy but agree to a land lease policy.
• Both the United States and Britain promised not to try to increase their own
power in the years ahead, either by seizing land that belonged to other
countries.
• Both countries agreed that people all over the world should be allowed to
choose their own form of government.
• Both countries agreed that after eliminating the Nazi terror, all nations of the
world should work together to ensure peace and prosperity for all nations. They
promised to defend life, liberty, independence, religious freedoms and preserve
human rights and justice in their own countries and others.
Wartime Conferences
Moscow Declaration 1943
Moscow Declaration 1943
The governments of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union and the
United States of America are agreed that Austria, the first free
country to fall a victim to Hitlerite aggression, shall be liberated
from German domination. They regard the annexation imposed on
Austria by Germany on March 15, 1938, as null and void.
Declaration on Italy
In the Declaration on Italy, the foreign secretaries of the US,
UK and USSR declared that facism and its influence should
be completely destroyed and that the Italian people should
be given every opportunity to establish governmental and
other institutions based on democratic principles.
They noted that "evidence of atrocities, massacres and
cold-blooded mass executions which are being
perpetrated by Hitlerite forces in many of the countries
they have overrun and from which they are now being
steadily expelled".
They went on to state that Germans would be sent back to
the countries where they had committed their crimes and
"judged on the spot by the peoples whom they have
outraged".
As for those Germans whose criminal offenses had no
particular geographical localisation, they would be
punished by joint decision of the governments of the
Allies.
Dumbarton Oaks Conference, 1944
• Dumbarton Oaks Conference, (August 21–October 7, 1944),
meeting at Dumbarton Oaks, a mansion in Georgetown,
Washington, D.C., where representatives of China, the Soviet
Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom formulated
proposals for a world organisation that became the basis for the
United Nations.
The Chief Proposals
The purposes of the organisation should be:
• To maintain international peace and security
• To develop friendly relations among nations
• The solution of international economic, social and other
humanitarian problems
• To afford a centre for harmonising the actions of the nations in the
achievement of these common ends
The San Francisco Conference April 1945
• The Conference of the United Nations was called to meet in San
Francisco on April 25, 1945, for the sole purpose of drafting the
charter of a world security organisation, and concluded on June
26, 1945, after fifty-one days of debate, negotiation, and
drafting.
