The Hidden History of the United Nations

June 4, 2005 11:16 AM

The Hidden History of the United Nations: "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."
posted by jenleigh (15 comments total)

[this is good]
posted by quonsar at 12:15 PM on June 4, 2005

Thanks for that, excellent article!

It always makes me laugh when people assume the Hollywood version of WWII is truthful.

Younger Americans, in particular, are prone to remarks like "we saved Europe from Hitler" - quite sincerely said - because, of course, nobody ever told them the real history: that many influential Americans, especially the corporations, actively supported Hitler (particularly George Bush's grandfather).

Most Americans today really don't know that America remained neutral when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, then Poland, then Denmark, Belgium, Holland, France, Norway, Greece, Russia... when Hitler bombed London, America remained neutral.

America remained neutral until they, themselves, were attacked at Pearl Harbour. By contrast, Britain and France (cowardly France, the media tell us regularly!) declared war when Hitler attacked Poland.

It's nice to see a well-researched, straightforward article that points out some more of the history that America conveniently forgot.

Amid the current administration's rush to discredit and undermine the UN, it's good to remember that the UN was formed to fight against fascism.
posted by cleardawn at 12:36 PM on June 4, 2005

In addition to what cleardawn said, Roosevelt had to work hard to get Americans interested in fighting the war in Europe; there was a lot of opposition to that even after Pearl Harbour. It was the war in the Pacific that was at the top of the list for most Americans at that time, not the European war.
posted by fossil_human at 1:15 PM on June 4, 2005

Younger Americans, in particular, are prone to remarks like "we saved Europe from Hitler"

And how many of them would be able to point Europe on map with legends?
posted by c13 at 1:27 PM on June 4, 2005

And how many of them would be able to point Europe on map with legends?

I just looked and I couldn't find anything labeled Europe on my map (with legends). Other than North America there are just big sea monsters and then the four edges of the world.
posted by srboisvert at 1:44 PM on June 4, 2005

cleardawn:
Well, lots of Americans remembered the idiocy of the Great War, my understanding is that many saw the Second World War as simply a repeat of that, a bloody, useless slaughter. American's saw that their involvement in the WI only lead to dead Americans and having Americans kill Europeans for little to no reason. It is understandable that many would not want to get involved in another European war again.

And yes, while America remained ostensibly "neutral" before Congress declared war, there were things like the Lend-Lease Act and the American flyers in China that aided Britain and other Allied forces.

America didn't "save the world", this is obviously true to anyone who has studied some basic history of the war, but they did provide a lot of the neccessary economic backing and a decent amount of manpower that allowed the UN to win; it is also not the case that America was filled with isolationist xenophobes who didn't care a whit about was going on in Europe and Asia before they were attacked, either.
posted by Snyder at 1:45 PM on June 4, 2005

Oh, and this is an excellent article too, I've heard/seen the reference the the United Nations in Eisenhower's D-Day address, I had always assumed that it was simply a synonym for the Allies, one that was used at the end of the war for the new world political body, I was unaware of how much it had already existed.
posted by Snyder at 1:49 PM on June 4, 2005

Perhaps with the exception of some coverage of Vietnam and battles during WWII, I would say that primary and secondary education in the US is pretty paltry when it comes to coverage of 20th century events. So much emphasis is placed upon the initial colonization, the founding of the country, and the civil war, while very little time is spent covering the impact of more recent events in US (and international) history.

It is doubtful that even 1 in 10 American students knows anything about the history of how the UN was founded. I know I wasn't taught anything about it, and certainly could stand to learn more about modern world history.

But other important events and movements in the 20th century, such as the rise of labor unions and related socialist movements, and their crucial influence on present-day society, are ignored to the point that most people doubt today the necessity of having unions of any kind. The civil rights movement, and the segregation that it fought against, is so sugar coated that many conservatives attempt to co-opt Martin Luther King, Jr as an opponent of affirmative action, which he was not.
posted by Deathalicious at 1:53 PM on June 4, 2005

It is nice to see this forgotten history posted. By the way, the Open Democracy site has lots of good stuff every week.
posted by caddis at 5:44 PM on June 4, 2005

One thing the article leaves out is that the five permanent members of the Security Council, The United States, Russia, The United Kingdom, France, and China are also the five victorious powers of WWII and, not coincidentally, the first five nuclear powers.
posted by euphorb at 8:22 PM on June 4, 2005

Good article and the Open Democracy site is new to me. Thanks.
posted by arse_hat at 9:21 PM on June 4, 2005

Younger Americans, in particular, are prone to remarks like "we saved Europe from Hitler" - quite sincerely said - because, of course, nobody ever told them the real history: that many influential Americans, especially the corporations, actively supported Hitler (particularly George Bush's grandfather).

You say that like it's impossible for both to be true.

I know the first is overly triumphalist (we can't forget the European and Soviet war dead, numbering far more than our own), even if the US ultimately provided the industrial engine for the entire allied effort (for instance, under Lend-Lease, Russia fought Germany with tanks and trucks built in the US). It's also an exaggeration to speak of "supporting Hitler"; even though there were some nativists and the like who were quite approving of the racial policies of the Third Reich, the primary motivation was an opposition to Bolshevism -- which at that time had already killed millions. Sitting here today, I really have to wonder which side I would have been on; for many Americans of the day it was that difficult a choice. Siding with Germany seemed, at some level, to be siding with Europe. There were also many ethnic and trade ties with Germany which were not duplicated in our relationship with Russia. Pro-German sentiment is not, in and of itself, pro-Nazi sentiment.

Most Americans today really don't know that America remained neutral when Hitler invaded Czechoslovakia, then Poland, then Denmark, Belgium, Holland, France, Norway, Greece, Russia... when Hitler bombed London, America remained neutral.

That's not strictly true. The US knew immediately that there would be a major war. But we didn't have the military preparedness, coming out of the depression, to counter the Wehrmacht and Reichsmarine -- our men and ships were a fraction of Germany's. Popular support was strong for staying out of the war as long as we could, in order to build up our own defenses. By the middle of 1940 the US had passed its largest military budget in history, and the Destroyers for Bases agreement (a precursor of Lend-Lease), as well as organized the Flying Tigers to counter Japanese incursions in China (and we had supported Chiang Kai-Shek for years already at that point). There really was no question of what side we were on after six months (and the war showing no signs of winding down, one reason behind US reluctance). It was only a question of how much support we would give, and when.

The US had avoided entangling itself, under the Washington Doctrine, in European affairs such as the Triple Entente (which was what bound France and Britain to the defense of Poland). To the extent that there was opposition to Hitler, there was also disdain at ineffectual efforts to counter him such as Munich. Much like Yugoslavia decades later, the Europeans were seen to have mismanaged an obviously dangerous situation. That Britain and France both failed to halt the invasion of Poland, despite treaty obligations, was seen at the time as a more serious failure of courage than the US, which wasn't similarly obligated. The US, worried about Japan, felt it had its own fish to fry.

America remained neutral until they, themselves, were attacked at Pearl Harbour. By contrast, Britain and France (cowardly France, the media tell us regularly!) declared war when Hitler attacked Poland.

I won't argue that the criticism of France is laughable. The entire slur seems to stem from Petain suing for peace and accepting occupation of half his country; this ignores de Gaulle's personal and political courage in refusing to accept the same. Just as with France, neither the heroic or cowardly gloss on the US is the entire story. In the end I'm completely comfortable with the US sacrifices once we had no choice but to be in the war. The official US participation in the alliance began with the Atlantic Charter, which was signed in August 1941 -- four months before Pearl Harbor.

jenleigh: This article confuses me. The author seems to be making a point about modern American attitudes toward the UN, while buttressing that argument with textbook examples of how the UN was a creation of allied and particularly US foreign policy. Although I am much more of an idealist than the neo-cons, one could see how that history argues for their utilitarian view of the UN as a tool for American purposes, and one which indeed should be grateful to its creator instead of willful and independent. If the author was arguing against that point of view, he did a poor job.
posted by dhartung at 9:24 PM on June 4, 2005

"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.."

Excellent article, thanks jenleigh.
posted by peacay at 9:33 PM on June 4, 2005

just thought i'd point out this essay in the nytimes book review today: "In the constantly changing narrative of American history, a globalized history of the United States is only the latest twist." :D

cheers!
posted by kliuless at 9:22 AM on June 5, 2005

that many influential Americans, especially the corporations, actively supported Hitler

Didn't the NYT support Hitler early on?
posted by ZenMasterThis at 10:34 AM on June 5, 2005