A Little History #3: The End of the War and Return of American Isolationism by Tom McDermott

This article continues the Little History series I am updating for UNICEF’s 80th anniversary and launches a three-part look into the events and personalities that led to UNICEF’s founding. Stepping back into the war years (1939–1945), it shifts from the key personalities introduced in earlier posts to the rise and fall of UNRRA—the critical backdrop against which UNICEF would soon emerge.

If you missed the earlier articles in this series, you may wish to read them first:  A Little History #1: Dr. Ludwik Rajchman—Father of UNICEF / Godfather of WHO and  A Little History #2: How Helenka Adamowska Pantaleoni Brought Rajchman and Pate Together at Lake Success

UNRRA documentary title card, 1944.

Four Figures and a Vision for Relief

Following his defeat in the 1932 elections, former US President Hoover—a Republican—was sidelined by his successor, Franklin D. Roosevelt—a Democrat. Hoover spent the rest of the 1930s in de facto political exile, detested by Roosevelt and blamed by many Americans for the Depression. Yet Hoover refused to retreat into silence and turned to building private funding organisations for civilian relief in Europe, an undertaking very similar to his work during World War I and its aftermath.

Herbert Hoover in the 1930s.

In 1938, Hoover undertook an extensive tour of eastern Europe to assess the food situation and economic conditions. In 1939, only hours after Hitler's invasion of Poland, Hoover led the creation of the Commission for Polish Relief, serving as its Honorary Chairman and raising millions in private donations. In 1940, he organised the National Committee on Food for Small Democracies, shipping food aid to Finland, Norway, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Poland.

Hoover's longtime colleague Maurice Pate, with whom he had collaborated on relief efforts since before the United States entered the First World War, served as President of the Commission for Polish Relief. Like Hoover, Helenka Pantaleoni was a gifted fund-raiser for Polish Relief among the American public. All three understood that postwar relief would demand both vision and political courage.

In early 1939, Ludwik Rajchman resigned his position as Director of the League of Nations Health Organization and retreated to his home in Chenu, France. There he initially worked trying to help his Polish countrymen escaping from Poland to the West, but he soon concluded that the United States would be a better and safer base for such work. He arrived in the US in January 1940 and began work with the Polish government in exile, soon becoming its official envoy. In this role, Rajchman worked closely with Hoover's Commission and spent much of his time in Washington lobbying for Poland.

All four figures—Rajchman, Hoover, Pate, and Pantaleoni—had deep roots in Poland and throughout Eastern Europe. Their shared history and vision for coordinated, multilateral relief would shape their actions in the years ahead.

The Promise and Failure of UNRRA

In November 1943, the United States, Soviet Union, Britain, and China established the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration—a "United Nations" organisation created before the United Nations itself formally existed. The invention was Roosevelt's solution to a historical problem: after the First World War, private charities and ad hoc relief efforts had left thousands displaced and struggling. This time, the Allies would act collectively and systematically. UNRRA's purpose was to "plan, co-ordinate, administer or arrange for the administration of measures for the relief of victims of war in any area under the control of any of the United Nations through the provision of food, fuel, clothing, shelter and other basic necessities, medical and other essential services." The ambition was vast; 70% of the aid originated with the United States, and 44 countries participated in the relief in Europe and Asia.

Yet by May 1945, barely eighteen months into operation, UNRRA had proven "almost completely inadequate; it has only chipped away at its enormous problem." The troubles were primarily structural and bureaucratic. First, the military—initially sceptical of anything outside its direct control—snubbed UNRRA, with General Eisenhower not signing an agreement permitting it to enter liberated areas until November 1944. Second, management was "hopelessly enmeshed in red tape," with routine correspondence requiring signatures through a chain that made even basic decisions glacial. One UNRRA employee remarked in frustration: "By the time we get an answer through this jungle we've said the hell with it." Third, UNRRA's staffing was uneven: whilst the agency had drawn excellent personnel from NGOs and the military, the sudden opening of vast vacancies in Europe and China as the war drew to a close forced rapid hiring without adequate screening, creating a mixed workforce.

UNRRA supplies arriving for distribution in Europe, c. 1945.

Rajchman's Frustration: The Untapped Expert

When Sir Arthur Salter, the Senior Deputy Director-General of UNRRA, sought expert counsel on public health matters in 1944, his attention fell on Ludwik Rajchman. Salter had read Rajchman's September 1943 article, "Why Not? A United Nations Health Service," published in a popular monthly, where Rajchman stressed that such a service must work through—not over and above—national governments. The article impressed Salter, and he invited Rajchman to review UNRRA's policy on public health with regard to problems of refugee health, sanitation, and epidemics likely to arise as the war ended.

Dr. Ludwik Rajchman

But the assignment proved frustrating for Rajchman. The scope was severely limited. He wanted to participate in drafting a much wider global public health structure along the lines of the one he had created after World War I. In attempts to influence the planning of a World Health Organization, Rajchman found himself blocked by various detractors who saw him as blunt, demanding, and "too much of a pusher and a doer." For the United States in particular, he was seen as a dangerous left-winger and outright Communist. His final report for UNRRA and his proposal for an international health organisation were buried without serious consideration.

International Health Conference, New York, 1946.

When the International Health Conference was held in New York City from 19 June to 22 July 1946, Rajchman was not even invited. This exclusion was a sad insult for the man who had played such an enormous role in creating the international public health network from 1921 to 1939. As Norman Howard-Jones, a senior WHO official, later lamented: "How was it possible that this man, with his unique experience—the man who was the real author of the broader conception of international health work that developed between the two World Wars—was never invited to participate in the consultations that led to the establishment of WHO?"

Yet Rajchman refused to accept defeat. Undaunted by the opposition he faced, he stepped around his opponents and found his way back to UNRRA in June 1945, this time not as a consultant but as Poland's official envoy. In this position he could lobby freely among other delegations in the negotiations over creation of both WHO and UNICEF.

The Political Backlash: Republicans Find Their Voice

Throughout the war years, Republican leaders had largely restrained their criticism of Roosevelt's core strategy. Party elders backed the troops and avoided direct attacks on the administration's conduct of the war, fearing charges of disloyalty in wartime. They remained highly critical but relatively quiet in the early years over the extension of Lend-Lease following Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 and the later inclusion of the Soviet Union as a full partner in the alliance against the Axis.

But by 1944 and 1945, as victory appeared certain, this wartime truce began to fracture. Figures like Thomas Dewey, Robert Taft, and Jessie Sumner increasingly challenged the administration's postwar planning and, more pointedly, its commitment to international relief structures like UNRRA.

January 1944: Rep. Jessie Sumner charged that UNRRA "is illegal and will make Stalin dictator of Europe. Stalin will use his armies to win elections in the liberated areas."

Congressional criticism intensified sharply near the end of the war and into the early Cold War, as Republicans accused Roosevelt of "selling out" Eastern Europe and Poland to Soviet domination and China to the Communist forces.

Conservative critics zeroed in on UNRRA as a symbol of everything they opposed about Roosevelt's vision of American engagement abroad. They argued that relief packages were dispatching American food, goods, and machinery to foreign populations whilst shortages persisted at home. More damaging still, they charged that supplies meant for war victims were being diverted to feed Soviet-controlled populations and communist local governments across Eastern Europe. By war's end, anti-communist rhetoric had fused with fiscal conservatism and American isolationism, creating a potent coalition against multilateral relief.

This legislative pushback against foreign aid would accelerate dramatically in 1946 and set the stage for the broader postwar Red Scare that would dominate the next decade. UNRRA, once seen as the foundation for postwar stability, was now viewed by a resurgent isolationist coalition as an instrument of American weakness and Soviet appeasement. The multilateral relief system was collapsing—and with it, the hope that nations would act collectively to prevent the chaos that had followed 1918.

The next article in this series will look at the roles and politics of the mid-1940s which led to President Truman's decision to create a Famine Emergency Commission and appoint Hoover to undertake an extensive tour of the global postwar food situation. The mission culminated with Hoover's dramatic speech to the Canadian Parliament and broadcast throughout North America, which provided the emotional catalyst for focus on children as the key element in global recovery from the war.