The Dumbarton Oaks Conversations and the United Nations, 1944-1994

In 1944, as the end of World War II approached, an important series of talks were held to plan the formation of postwar international institutions. The meetings, which included debates on a variety of issues, were a first step toward the creation of the United Nations, whose establishment followed some months after. The site for the conversations was Dumbarton Oaks in Washington, D.C., a research institute administered by Harvard University.

In 1994, the "Dumbarton Oaks Conference, 1944-1994" brought together scholars and policymakers who had studied international organizations or had played important roles in them. A half century later, the world had evolved in ways that would have been unimaginable to many attendees of either the original conversations or the conference. This reissue of the conference proceedings, coinciding with the seventy-fifth anniversary of the United Nations in 2020, may assist readers who wish to familiarize themselves with the conditions that motivated the meetings in 1944.