Planning for Peace Abroad

Throughout World War II, FDR worked to create an organization dedicated to global cooperation and peace through collective security. In 1942, he invited representatives of 25 Allied nations to sign a declaration pledging each "to defend life, liberty, independence, and religious freedom, and to preserve human rights and justice..." FDR called this wartime coalition the "United Nations" and led efforts to expand it into a postwar organization.

His vision combined elements of idealism and realism. Roosevelt imagined an organization of nations dedicated to equality and mutual security. But its backbone would be the "Four Policemen" - The United States, Great Britain, Soviet Union, and China - who would enforce the peace through a Security Council.

FDR died days before he was to address the opening of the conference that created the U.N.