10/24/2007

October 24 is United Nations Day
By Tom Range, Sr.

The seeds of the United Nations were sown in August 1941 with the signing of the Atlantic Charter by Franklin Delano Roosevelt, President of the United States and Winston Churchill, Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, aboard the British warship Prince of Wales off Newfoundland.  The leaders of the free world were conferring on combating the spread of Nazi aggression in Europe.  The United States had not yet been drawn into World War II. 

On August 21, 1944 a meeting of heads of Allied governments began at Dumbarton Oaks, an estate just outside the District of Columbia.  It was recognized by the governments participating that, with the successful landings at Normandy, it was only a matter of time before the Nazi Third Reich would be defeated.  The Allied nations were assembled to develop plans for the establishment of an international organization dedicated to establishing and maintaining peace, with enough latitude in enforcing its actions, a flexibility sorely lacking in the League of Nations, which had been established with similar aspirations after World War I.  A major handicap confronting the League was the absence of the United States as a member.  Post-war isolationism in the U.S. Senate caused the defeat of the ratification of America's participation.

During the Dumbarton Oaks conference, the structure of the United Nations (UN) was thrashed out.  It consisted of two deliberative bodies: the Security Council, composed of five permanent members and six other member states chosen for a fixed term from among the smaller UN members; and the General Assembly, with equal representation of independent nations.  The selection of the rotating delegations in the Security Council would be by vote.  The five permanent members were the United States (U.S.), United Kingdom (U.K.), the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (U.S.S.R.), France and China.  All of the permanent members can cast a veto to kill a proposed action by the Security Council. 

The U.S.S.R., even as the winds of war continued to blow throughout the world, began constructing roadblocks to assure itself of dominating the UN.  Membership in the General Assembly was reserved for states independent of the domination of another state.  Yet the U.S.S.R. demanded at first that each of its 16 "republics" be granted membership.  The U.S. and U.K. were forced to yield on this question of representation by allowing Ukraine and White Russia individual memberships in the General Assembly.

In January 1945 the big three leaders Roosevelt (FDR), Churchill and Josef Stalin, leader of the U.S.S.R., met at Yalta in the U.S.S.R. to further confer on the establishment of the UN.  In April, another conference convened, this time in San Francisco, and by June a Charter for the United Nations was approved by the 50 countries represented.  As the nations were deliberating, FDR died on April 12 and Vice President Harry Truman was elevated to the presidency of the U.S. 

On June 25, exactly two months after the opening ceremony, the delegates to the San Francisco conference unanimously approved the UN Charter.  President Truman witnessed the signing and addressed the delegates, his first public appearance since assuming office.  He then personally delivered the Charter to the Senate commenting, "The choice before the senate … is not between this Charter and something else, it is between this Charter and no Charter at all."

The U.S. Senate ratified the UN Charter with only two votes against; William Langer (R-ND) and Henrik Shipstead (R-MN.).  By October 24, 1945 all of the permanent members of the Security Council and a majority of the other founding members had ratified the Charter.  The United Nations now had a legal existence.  This day in October is marked as the anniversary of the UN and is celebrated as such each year.

London hosted the UN on a temporary basis until more permanent accommodations could be agreed upon.  In March 1946 the Security Council was transferred to the Bronx, New York campus of Hunter College.  Certain buildings on campus had been leased to the federal government for military training for the duration of the war.  The building to house the Security Council was available through the summer and then it would revert to the college to be restored to academic purposes.  Once the school year started, the Security Council was moved to the Sperry Gyroscope plant at Lake Success in New York's Queens County.  This facility had been used to house sensitive military experimentation during the war. 

Concurrently, the 50 nation General Assembly was housed in the New York City Building on the site of the 1939-1940 World's Fair at Flushing Meadows in Queens.  This building had been used as a skating rink since the fair closed.

There had been agitation within the UN and the host city for permanent locations for the international body.  On December 11, 1946 the UN was informed that John D. Rockefeller Jr. had offered the organization $8.5 million to buy six blocks of slaughterhouses and slums along the East River in the Turtle Bay section of Manhattan just north of East 42nd Street.  It comprised 18 acres of land.  The UN complex of buildings bordering the East River was completed in 1952.