Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy

UN Wartime History for the Future

 

Understanding the wartime United Nations reframes our understanding of the second half of the last century and of our own. From UNESCO to the World Bank the primary purpose of the multilateral system is conflict prevention and its wartime architects bequeathed us this system as a realist necessity vital in times of trial, not as a liberal accessory to be discarded when the going gets rough.

This research is encapsulated in Dan Plesch's 'America, Hitler and the UN' published by IB Tauris. The book shows how the United Nations was born in 1942, defeated the Axis Powers led by Germany, Italy and Japan and created today's UN system. America, Britain and the Soviet Union led a coalition of states organised as the United Nations. Bretton Woods and San Francisco were United Nations conferences, and interim United Nations organisations preceded the Charter.

The Centre is now working an a project on the Wartime History and Future UN with the Ralph Bunche Institute for International Study at the Graduate Centre of the City University of New York.

 

View a full-screen version of this interactive and video timeline.

The UN in World War II America: map icons open to WWII conferences, local newspaper articles and college activity on the UN


View The UN in World War II America in a larger map

View a map of the United Nations in Wartime London

The project leaders are interested in developing partnerships with other researchers and organizations on the implications of the wartime United Nations (WUN) for contemporary international policy and U.S. politics in particular and in its relationship to IR theory, the archaeology, genealogy and historiography of the study of international politics since 1945 and the impact of the WUN on the campaigns and politics of the Second World War.

Previous and upcoming events

Project participants

Walter Christman, Jill Kastner, Jerry Kuehl, Dan Plesch, Dorothy Thomas, Sir Brian Urquhart, David Wardrop, Prof Thomas G. Weiss

Project assistant

Maya Irvine

Project resources

Video albums

Podcast albums