United Nations Association

The United Nations Association sponsored a summer 1943 speaking tour through the Midwest to promote international cooperation after the Second World War. Its role in the account is concrete but significant: it provided the sponsorship for a public campaign that brought the case for American engagement in a postwar international organization to audiences across four states.

Postwar internationalism

As the war continued, Harry S. Truman and other senators were increasingly considering the problems that would follow it. Truman did not directly draft a Senate resolution calling for a postwar international organization, a United Nations; the measure was sponsored by Senators Ball, Burton, Hatch, and Lister Hill. He was, however, described as its acknowledged guiding spirit. His position was that the United States could not avoid assuming world leadership after the war.

The Midwest speaking tour

In the summer of 1943, the United Nations Association sponsored Truman and Republican congressman Walter Judd on a speaking tour. Both had served in the First World War, and together they carried an internationalist argument into Iowa, Nebraska, Kansas, and Missouri. The tour made the Association a platform for advancing the idea that the United States had responsibilities beyond the immediate conduct of the war.

Message and significance

Across the tour, Truman returned to the danger of repeating the failures of the past: the country had failed to secure a genuine peace before, he argued, and must not fail again. The Association’s sponsorship connected this appeal to the broader campaign for a postwar international organization. The evidence portrays it not as the author of the Senate resolution, but as a sponsor of public advocacy that helped make international cooperation a subject of political persuasion beyond the Senate.