The primary mover of progress towards and at the conference was Frank L. McDougall, economic advisor to the Australian High Commission and previously a long-time activist for agricultural and nutritional issues at the League of Nations.
[4]: 153 Attached to the Australian legation in Washington, McDougall managed to approach US Vice President Henry A. Wallace and subsequently the President and First Lady, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, about the advantages of his ideas in regards to postwar agricultural issues.
Members of the Axis powers were not invited; Nazi Germany's state newspaper, the Völkischer Beobachter, reported on 21 May 1943, that the Hot Springs Conference was an Allied ploy to place global food supplies under the control of the major Allied states, making the Hot Springs Conference, in Nazi parlance, an attempted "anchoring of the political dictatorship of Wall Street Jews all over the world".
The Völkischer Beobachter repeated its attacks (always paired with antisemitic rhetoric) on the Hot Springs Conference over several articles and into June 1943.
[8]: 34 The Hot Springs Conference's focus on postwar humanitarian relief preparations is also reflected in the preparations, starting in 1943, for the establishment of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA).