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HIS: This Day in History: 1944 – Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations, begins.

HIS: This Day in History: 1944 – Dumbarton Oaks Conference, prelude to the United Nations, begins.


The Dumbarton Oaks Conference or, more formally, the Washington Conversations on International Peace and Security Organization was an international conference at which proposals for the establishment of a "general international organization", which was to become the United Nations, were formulated and negotiated. The conference was led by the Big Four – the United States, the United Kingdom, the USSR and the Republic of China – with delegates from other nations participating in the consideration and formulation of these principles. It was held at Dumbarton Oaks, in Washington, D.C., U.S., from August 21, 1944, to October 7, 1944. 

The Dumbarton Oaks Conference constituted the first important step taken to carry out paragraph 4 of the Moscow Declaration of 1943, which recognized the need for a postwar international organization to succeed the League of Nations. At the conference, delegations from the Four Powers, the Republic of China, the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United Kingdom, deliberated over proposals for the establishment of an organization to maintain peace and security in the world. Among the representatives were the British Permanent Under-Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, Sir Alexander Cadogan; Soviet Ambassador to the United States Andrei Gromyko; Chinese Ambassador to the United Kingdom Wellington Koo; and U.S. Under-Secretary of State Edward Stettinius Jr., each of whom chaired his respective delegation. (When Cadogan was called back to London after the first half of the conference, leadership of the delegation was assumed by Edward Wood, 1st Earl of Halifax, the British ambassador in Washington.) The conference itself was chaired by Stettinius, and U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull delivered the opening address.

The conversations were held in two phases, since the Soviets were unwilling to meet directly with the Chinese. In the first phase, representatives of the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States convened between August 21 and September 28. In the second, representatives of Republic of China, the United Kingdom, and the United States held discussions between September 29 and October 7.

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