Dumbarton Oaks Conference

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.

(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.

Already in June 1942, on behalf of the director, John S. Thacher, and the Trustees for Harvard University, he had offered to place the facilities of Dumbarton Oaks at the disposal of Secretary Hull.

In Act of Creation: The Founding of the United Nations Stephen Schlesinger has provided a graphic account of the complete American control of the conference, including US military intelligence of cable traffic to the delegates and FBI watch of their movements in the city: "The military man in charge of the San Francisco eavesdropping and codebreaking operation indicated his own sense of accomplishment: 'Pressure of work has at last abated and the 24-hour day has shortened.

"[7] Robert Hilderbrand depicts the atmosphere around the conference and how Stettinius took British and Soviet negotiators to the Diamond Horseshoe nightclub and cocktails with Nelson Rockefeller.

Then, ‘the cavalcade arrived at Stettinius’s home, Horseshoe, where the party ate a buffet supper and were entertained by a negro quartet singing spirituals’.

Rockefeller had the Latin American delegations on his side, a relationship that angered Nicolo Tucci, the head of the Bureau of Latin American Research in the US State Department, who resigned, declaring that ‘my bureau was supposed to undo the Nazi and Fascist propaganda in South America but Rockefeller is inviting the worst fascists and Nazis to Washington.

Lastly, the seemingly extravagant character of this Soviet demand intended to make clear that any International Organization willing to manage the new world without the USSR being treated equally was condemned to fail.

This led to the admission of the Ukrainian and the Belarusian SSRs as full members of the UN and prompted Roosevelt to accept in Yalta the right of veto at the Security Council.