9781422285480

Amid great fear, however, visionary world leaders recognized that these uncertain times also held opportunity, the opportunity for the world’s people to come together.The formation of the United Nations was a supreme act of hope arising from a belief that,with the participation and cooperation of all nations, a lasting peace could be achieved for all peoples. It was not the first attempt at an international organization dedicated to peace. The most recent attempt had been the failed League of Nations, formed after World War I and proven inadequate by World War II. The United Nations sought to succeed where the League of Nations and others had failed. Never before had humanity united in such a way, and all hoped it spelled a better future for the world. A Pivotal Moment The UN Charter was the work of many people over a number of years as the world suffered through its second world war. One pivotal moment took place in the summer of 1941 in London. Representatives of the Allied powers— Great Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and the Union of South Africa, and the exiled governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, and France—met at St. James’s Palace and declared “the willing cooperation of free peoples in a world in which, relieved of the menace of aggression, all may enjoy economic and social security . . . . It is our intention to work together, and with other free peoples, both in war and peace, to this end.”

March of German prisoners of war in Aachen, Germany, which fell to Allied soldiers in October 1944, close to the end of World War II.

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Chapter One