On The Policy Of U.S. Congress For The Post-war International Peace Organization During World War Two, 1942-1943

In the 1942 Congressional elections, the Republican party made impressive gains, picking up forty-four seats in the House and nine in the Senate.It was their best showing since the 1920's,and they came very close to winning control of Congress.The normal Democratic majority had nearly vanished. Moreover,the people were disillusioned with the course of the war.Frustrated by wartime controls and restrictions and craving military victories,the American people had voted against the Roosevelt administration. There was,however,no genuine isolationist resurgence.By 1943,the internationalists over the Congress were poised for a great crusade to place the United States on record in favor of international organization. The new congressmen and senators soon proved open to internationalist persuasion.Even before the United States was drawn into World War II ,its political leaders instructed an obscure unit of the national bureaucracy to begin studies of how American foreign policy should be geared to the post-war world.This work, which assumed a greater urgency after the United States entered the war,passed through several upheavals and revisions.It was largely conducted outside of public view.It eventually provided the majority features and indispensable details of post-war organizational structures that the President and the Congress discussed only in very general and frequently contradictory terms.The Congressional interest in peace, however, had taken deeper root much more than F.D.R.and the State Department realized. When the Seventy-eighth Congress convened in the winter of 1943, several types of measures in preparation for the post-war period and for the unknown post-war problems which the Congress should be encountered had been introduced in both houses of Congress. One is represented by bills introduced in the Senate and House dealing with specific issues in reconstruction. The second type of proposals were in the form of resolutions to deal with post-war planning in a general and comprehensive way. The third type of resolutions were relating to postwar international relations and proposing varying degrees of encouraging international cooperation and cultivating post-war peace organization.The B2H2 resolution, Fulbright resolution, and the Connally resolution were among the most important resolutions which had been reported out in U.S.Congress since Pearl Habor.In addition, in March 28, 1944, a joint resolution to enable the United States to participate in the work of the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Organization(UNRRA) was passed in the Senate and the House respectively. These resolutions differ in scope, in procedure to be used, and in powers asked for. But they are as broad and general as each other in the terminology of the resolutions. Among other things, the full and generous participation of the United States in efforts to maintain international peace and security and to promote the common welfare is basic. This thesis deals with the process of introduction,discussion and resolting to vote of the resolutions above and analyses the causes which affected the policy-making process of U.S.Congress.