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How was the United Nations formed?

Officially, the United Nations was not formed until October 1945. Events during World War II (1939–45), however, had paved the way for the founding of the international peacekeeping organization that today is familiar to people around the world.

In 1939 Nazi German führer (supreme leader) Adolf Hitler (1889–1945) and his troops invaded Poland, and soon Germany had conquered much of Europe. Leaders of nine nations—Belgium, Czechoslovakia, France, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Yugoslavia—met with Great Britain and its Commonwealth states (countries that belonged to the British Empire) in London, England. On June 12, 1941, the countries signed the Inter-Allied Declaration, vowing to work together for a free world. Two months later, on August 14, U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) and British prime minister Winston Churchill...

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