--- title: United Nations General Assembly 2015: History of U.N. Name description: In 1942, the group known as the United Nations was convened to accomplish one goal: defeat the Axis powers canonical: https://time.com/3378786/the-history-behind-the-other-united-nations/ author: Noah Rayman article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-16T11:00:16.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-21T10:11:19.458Z article:section: History og:title: The Original United Nations og:description: The first United Nations was an instrument of war, not of peace og:url: https://time.com/3378786/the-history-behind-the-other-united-nations/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4b16ae84fa1f2f2f/6986a358cd6848267b09672a/united-nations.png?branch=production&width=473&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 473 og:image:height: 266 og:image:alt: united nations - Jan. 19, 1942 og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: The Original United Nations twitter:description: The first United Nations was an instrument of war, not of peace twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4b16ae84fa1f2f2f/6986a358cd6848267b09672a/united-nations.png?branch=production&width=473&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # The History Behind the Other 'United Nations' > Sponsored content. 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They are at time.com/newsletters and are separate from a paid subscription.  by [Noah Rayman](https://time.com/author/noah-rayman/)  ## Noah Rayman Sep 16, 2014 11:00 AM UTC  From the Jan. 19, 1942, issue of TIME From the Jan. 19, 1942, issue of TIME TIME  by [Noah Rayman](https://time.com/author/noah-rayman/)  ## Noah Rayman Sep 16, 2014 11:00 AM UTC The United Nations was created in 1942 — but not the United Nations as we know it, the group whose representatives are this week converging in New York City for the 69th General Assembly. When the phrase first “slipped into the world’s vocabulary,” as TIME wrote, the world was in the midst of war, and the concept of wide-scale international collaboration was fraught. World War II had already exposed the failure of the League of Nations, the international organization set up after the previous world war. Still, in January of 1942, 26 nations, including the U.S., the U.K., Russia and China, signed a pact uniting them in one goal: to defeat the Axis powers. The name, which had been proposed by the Roosevelt administration, became the official title for the Allied powers. “For the people of the Axis countries that fact could not be other than sobering: 26 nations—count them—26, all determined that Hitler and his tyranny shall be destroyed,” TIME wrote at the time. Even then there was skepticism that the United Nations could be effective. Some called for a cooperative body to oversee the war effort, while others continued to call for a union of peoples and not just an intergovernmental pact. But the United Nations prevailed, and when, after the war, world leaders [descended on San Francisco](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,797469,00.html) for the conference to hash out the details of an intergovernmental organization to jointly confront the world’s problems, they called it the United Nations. The first session of the United Nations General Assembly opened in 1946. Take a look at TIME’s coverage of the signing of the declaration of the original United Nations in 1942: --- > “” --- Today’s United Nations, by those standards, is even more impressive: instead of 26 member nations, there are 193. **_Read the 1942 story about the original United Nations here, in TIME’s archives:_** [The United Nations](http://content.time.com/time/subscriber/article/0,33009,766283-1,00.html) ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3378786/the-history-behind-the-other-united-nations/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3378786/the-history-behind-the-other-united-nations/"},"headline":"The History Behind the Other 'United Nations'","datePublished":"2014-09-16T11:00:16.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-21T10:11:19.458Z","description":"In 1942, the group known as the United Nations was convened to accomplish one goal: defeat the Axis powers","url":"https://time.com/3378786/the-history-behind-the-other-united-nations/","keywords":["politics","United Nations","U.N.","World War II","WWII"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4b16ae84fa1f2f2f/6986a358cd6848267b09672a/united-nations.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Noah Rayman","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/noah-rayman/"}],"articleSection":"History","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4b16ae84fa1f2f2f/6986a358cd6848267b09672a/united-nations.png?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"united nations - Jan. 19, 1942","caption":"united nations - Jan. 19, 1942","creditText":"TIME","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/history/","name":"History"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/politics/","name":"politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3378786/the-history-behind-the-other-united-nations/","name":"The History Behind the Other 'United Nations'"}}]}] ```