As World War II loomed on the horizon, the Nazi government in Germany ordered invasions of Czechoslovakia, Poland, Austria and the Ukraine. Also, Japan invaded Manchuria, insisting that the region was given to them as part of the treaty following the war with Russia. Meanwhile, the Russians were in a hurry to build a line of defense around their homeland in the form of the Soviet Union. Naturally, all of these events caused concern in Washington.
Hoping to establish an organization that could replace the League of Nations--one that might prove more effective, in 1939,the U.S. State Department organized the Declaration of St. James Palace. The gathering included representatives from Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Members of exiled governments from Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Yugoslavia also attended, as did General de Gaulle of France. The members held six conferences that led directly to the creation of the United Nations Charter in 1942.
President Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill and Harry Hopkins, a highly respected advisor of the U.S. president, first met to discuss the Untied Nations in December of 1941. A year later, 26 governments signed the Declaration, and by early 1945 it had 47 members in total. The first meeting of the United Nations General Assembly was in London, but in 1946 the headquarters was transferred to its present location in New York City.
The UN is organized a bit differently than the League of Nations, and its mission is different as well. Study the information on the tabs below to see how the organizations differ.
Membership
Military Force
Mandate
The UN has a much wider membership and is therefore a more global organization than the League: the participation of the U.S., Russia and China, for instance, allowed the UN to have a far wider reach than the League. Currently, UN membership includes 193 nations while the League never had more than 50 members.
![By Marcello Casal JR/ABr (Agência Brasil ([1])) [CC BY 3.0 br (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/br/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://s3.amazonaws.com/cms.accelerate-ed.com/image/039842e2-4746-4fbb-ab1d-6c3ad79e873d.jpg "UN 62nd General Assembly")
September 25, 2007.
To most people in the U.S., it seemed like the League of Nations was just a way for France and Britain to take revenge on the Central Powers--this was one reason why the U.S. Congress never seriously considered joining it. Also, Germany was not allowed to join until 1926, and the USSR only became a member in 1934. It seemed unacceptable that Japan could invade Manchuria at around the same time that Russia invaded Finland, but the League did nothing to stop either of them. For this reason, Germany and many of the other members could no longer see any reason to remain League members.
Many people considered the main failure of the League of Nations to be its lack of military enforcement capability, so the UN agreement includes voluntary member support for a Department of Peacekeeping Operations. The actual results of the UN having a military force have not always been very good, however, since the involvement of these forces has been very inconsistent. When the UN became involved in the Korean War, the Russian leader Stalin stated in 1951 that the it had become "the weapon of aggressive war." Other significant failures occurred in Cambodia, the Balkans and Rwanda.
![By Ricardo Stuckert/PR (Agência Brasil (ABr) [1]) [CC BY 3.0 br (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/br/deed.en)], via Wikimedia Commons](https://s3.amazonaws.com/cms.accelerate-ed.com/image/a58662dd-8e30-4a6a-af07-45f790e11b16.jpg "Brazilian Army soldiers, part of the United Nations Stabilization Mission in Haiti")
in Haiti.
One reason for the inconsistent use of UN Peacekeeping forces is that any of the five permanent members of the Security Council--China, France, Russia, the UK and the U.S--can use its power of veto to prevent a decisive action from being taken. Just like the League of Nations, the UN has no permanent army of its own and relies upon 'voluntary' forces belonging to its member states.
The U.S. currently pays 22% of the UN budget, according to official estimates. The main focus of UN activity and expenditure has been international social progress and regional development, including projects intended to help citizens in developing nations.
the good news that smallpox had been eradicated on a global scale.
Although the League of Nations carried out similar efforts, the work of the UN was expanded in its mandate. The UN agencies include: the World Health Organization(WHO), the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), the Human Rights Commission (HRC), the United Nations Children’s Emergency Fund (UNICEF), the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Question
In general, how does the United Nations differ from the League of Nations?
