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Perry Biddiscombe contends that the symbols of the United Nations (UN) have played a vital role in establishing the organization’s identity and in protecting its personnel.

Image courtesy of interviewee. March 6, 2024

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The speaker is writing a book on national flags and has explored various related topics, including a particular focus on the United Nations (UN) flag and symbols of internationalism. They note that while some scholars have touched on the topic, there were very few in-depth studies available, prompting the speaker to fill that gap.

The narrative traces the origins of the UN flag back to discussions among internationalists during World War II. These individuals, dubbed "popular internationalists," began designing flags for a potential UN structure, representing a shift towards structured international governance unlike the previous League of Nations, which lacked its own flag or emblem due to reluctance from major powers.

In contrast to the designs proposed by grassroots individuals, the UN emblem was ultimately created by a professional team from the advertising and branding industry, resulting in a familiar logo-like design symbolizing neutrality and peace, but lacking distinct ideological elements. The emblem features a world map surrounded by olive branches and was developed in 1945 in the lead-up to the San Francisco Conference, which formally established the UN.

The speaker argues that despite being intended as an international symbol, the UN emblem and flag largely emerged from an American context, influenced by American branding practices. The original designs aimed for neutrality to avoid alienating diverse member states, reflecting the international makeup of the UN. From its adoption in 1946 and 1947, the emblem served practical purposes, enhancing the visibility and protection of UN personnel operating in conflict zones.

Overall, the speaker highlights the complexities of the genesis and significance of the UN flag and emblem in the context of international diplomacy and identity.

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X-TIMESTAMP-MAP=LOCAL:00:00:00.000,MPEGTS:90000

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I have been, writing a book on Nash,

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on national flags.

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So sort of a general history

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of national symbolism for a long time.

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And in the process of doing that,

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I've spun off some other things on cognate, matters.

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Uh, and so the, this,

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work on the UN flag was one of those.

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I also wrote another article, well, actually in the process

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of writing another article on a black flag as well

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as flag of anarchism.

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So you, you can,

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sometimes when you're involved in a really big project

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that last year after year, you get, you pile up a lot

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of information and you can sort of spin off these,

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these side projects.

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It's really about national flags

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and why such things exist, where they come from, where

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that idea developed.

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And I sort of trace that to 17th century,

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Holland and England.

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Uh, and then how they develop in different kind of contexts

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and what kind of themes are general and basically how ethnic

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and national information is relayed through these,

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through, through these forums, a couple

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of people had written books, general books on the un,

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and they had sort of mentioned the topic in passing,

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although they really didn't go into detail.

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There were only really two, standalone articles on it.

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One of those was by a guy named McAllister Smith,

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Peter McAllister Smith,

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who was working in the legal context.

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He published his article in, I think it was the Nordic,

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journal of International Law.

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That was way back in the mid eighties.

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And that was sort of just an information piece

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where he was looking to mark the 40th anniversary of the un.

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Then there was another bit more substantial piece

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by a German journalist named Shirtle Harry Shirtle.

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And he published in a German journal.

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It was devoted to the UN called Theta Nazi.

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And, and that appeared in 2005.

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Uh, but again, it was pretty brief.

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Like he only had eight footnotes, so on.

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So it, it, it seemed to me like there was a,

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there was a niche there that I could fill.

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First of all, I can start off

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by saying in the early forties, at the very beginning

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of the story, it was this sort of vague idea,

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about the un It was sort of a vague, form

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of internationalism that was used as a synonym

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for the Allied Coalition.

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And it gathered against Hitler.

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Uh, as soon as that idea was sort of out in the ether

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by 1941 or so,

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and was being used as a, as a, as a name

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for the Allied Coalition.

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There were people, internationalist,

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popular internationalists, I would argue,

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who anticipated the formation of UN structure.

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And they were starting to design flags for this,

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for this prospective UN structure.

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So all corn, all kinds of people out, you know, unsolicited,

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sort of, interested in the, in internationalism

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and designing it, what they,

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what they hope would someday be a world flag.

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There's all kinds of people out there doing this.

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Identified these people with the term

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popular internationalism,

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Which I actually drew from Christopher, Andy.

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Christopher. Andy had written a book about 20 years ago

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about, tourism in the Cold War,

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and he had introduced this concept,

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which I found very valuable.

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So anyway, these folks are out there.

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Uh, you know, 19 41, 42, 43, 44,

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they're out designing these flags, trying to come up

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with a viable design for

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what they hope will be a world government

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or something of that sort.

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Um, and at the same time,

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basically the foreign policy establishment in the Roosevelt

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administration, it's really controlled by arrival, sort

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of distinguishable group of, of internationalists,

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who I call liberal international.

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So I think they've been actually identified in the

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literature pretty commonly as liberal internationalists.

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Um, and they're already embedded in the government, right?

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They're already embedded in the foreign

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policy establishment.

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Uh, so they don't appreciate all these contributions

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by these popular internationalists, right?

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They have really no use for this.

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Um, and it's quite the opposite.

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Not only, not only do they not appreciate the contributions,

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but actually in a couple of instances, they actually go out

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and they try to suppress them, right?

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Uh, 'cause their idea is

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that if an international symbol is gonna be devised for a,

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for an international organization

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to exist in the near future, then it should be professionals

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who attend to that, right?

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It, it should be people they pick

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and they should come from professional backgrounds.

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Uh, they should be specialists.

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Um, so, yeah, again, they have, they had no use

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for all these designs coming in from the periphery.

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Uh, and the main one of these designs was

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popularly called the Four Freedoms flag.

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It's the one that caught on most with the public.

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And so this, if you can envision it was a,

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was a white field, and it had four vertical bars on it.

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And that was supposed to stand for the four freedoms.

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The four freedoms, had been introduced

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by Roosevelt in 1941,

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and a famous address where he was trying to set up the basis

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of, of international humanitarianism.

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Um, so that, that was,

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and this, this, this design had been produced by a, I,

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I guess, again, popular internationalist named Harding,

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Brooks Harding,

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and Harding Har Harding wasn't a particularly,

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articulate guy, in print,

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or I don't think he was all that well educated.

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He was sort of a jack of all trades businessman,

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but he kind of threw himself into this project, 110%.

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Um, but he didn't really get any appreciation in the

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Roosevelt administration.

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He didn't get an appreciation in the,

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in the State Department.

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Roosevelt himself, I don't think cared particularly

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for, for the design.

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He saw it, but, he didn't say much about it.

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And, the British, that the Americans consulted British,

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the British really didn't seem interested either.

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Uh, and the only taker really that hiring has got

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is the sort of the deputy director of the Office of War

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Information in the Office

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of War information have been set up by the Americans.

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They handle publicity and propaganda in wartime.

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And so he uses it some in some, in some instances, sort

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of in immediate presentations or, or, or publicity.

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So this idea developed in the, in the interwar period that

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when, when commercial businesses develop a product,

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they could also develop at its marketing

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and its presentation to the public at the same time that,

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that these processes would all be integrated.

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And so you had advertising specialists, specialists

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with background in Medicine Avenue who knew about,

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who knew about this technique.

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And they, and some of these specialists had gone to work

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in the World War II period for the OSS, for the Office

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of Strategic Services, which is sort of, that was sort

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of the predecessor of what is now the CIA.

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And these people were assigned this project.

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Basically, this project came to them, was sort of seconded

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to them actually.

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They were actually in the OSS, they were assigned

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to the OSS, but they were seconded

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to the State Department in the early part of 1945.

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'cause the State Department was working on various

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kinds of media projects.

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And once they were seconded to the State Department,

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they, they got this project, this project came to them.

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This would be like March, 1945.

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'cause this has sort of been the run up

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to the San Francisco conference.

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The San Francisco conference was held in the sort

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of the mid-spring of 1945.

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And that's where the UN was formally organized.

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So when the run up to that, this project came to them,

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they had these backgrounds in, in,

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in product branding, right?

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This, these were sort of these mad men, right?

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From Madison Avenue, right?

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They had this kind of, they had this kind of background.

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Uh, and this project came to this team,

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and this team was actually head by headed

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by a guy named Lundquist Oliver Lundquist.

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And Lundquist had had a background with, the,

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Raymond Lowy firm.

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Raymond Lowy firm was a famous firm on, on Madison Avenue.

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And, and Lindquist himself had produced some of the, some

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of the really familiar commercial products, right, that

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you see in American culture back in the 1930s.

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Uh, and then he is assigned this task with a small team

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to develop this, this un emblem, which they did.

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They then had some, you know, brainstorming sessions.

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And they developed this, this emblem, this familiar emblem,

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the world emblem in the, the world with the, with the,

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of olives, the olive reef below it, in, in 1945.

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Um, and Staus, who was, by the way,

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Edward Staus was the US Secretary

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of State by this point in time.

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And his main deputy attending to the formation

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of the UN was Alger Hess.

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And both, staus

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and Hiss liked these designs very, very much.

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And, and they used them quite broadly at,

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at the San Francisco conference.

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Uh, and so that got, that got the un emblem

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or the kind, the emblem at least, that had been developed

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by this OSS team off to a running start.

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Basically. It's an entirely,

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It's an, it's supposed to be an international flag,

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but it's an entirely American project, right?

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It's, it's people from Wall Street, not Wall Street,

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but people from Madison Avenue who have, who have,

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come up with the basic idea.

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They haven't elicited a lot

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of contributions from anybody else.

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And by the way, in general, the impression I got was

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that this was sort of the way

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that Americans hosted international conferences in the,

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in the World War II period.

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Anyway, at least in the late war period.

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They sort of ran them on their own terms and, and they

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provided all the logistical support you

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would need for these conferences.

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And these emblems originally came,

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or this emblem, I should say, in singular originally came

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as part of that logistical support structure, right?

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For the San Francisco Conference.

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So, yeah, it was an American thing.

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Um, and I should go back actually to the, to the,

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to the bit about the, the bit about the Mad Men,

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you know, Madison Avenue guys coming up with the, the,

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emblem.

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It, it looked sort of like a logo, right?

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It looks sort of like a corporate logo,

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because it, it came from people

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who had that as a background.

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Couple things. So first of all,

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I think the UN's predecessor, which was the League

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of Nations, had had no, had no emblem of its own,

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or had no flag of its own.

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Um, and I think that was partly

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because some, some, some, some,

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policy makers in big states back in the, in the early 1920s

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and 1930s, didn't want to air,

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didn't wanna see the league irrigate that kind of power.

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They didn't wanna give that kind of,

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structure to the league.

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So the UN comes along in 1945 and 46,

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and it is conceived, I think at that point in time

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as a different kind of structure.

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It, it will have a stronger corporate character to it.

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It will have its own bureaucrats,

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it will have its own powerful Secretary General, and

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therefore it deserves,

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or it merits having, having its own emblem

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and its own flag as well.

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So there's that. Um,

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and then when, when un functionaries get control of this,

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this, emblem, the emblem really is sort of

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formally approved in 1946,

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and the flag comes along, it's formally approved in 1947.

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It's based on the emblem, obviously.

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Uh, and then when they get control of these things, they,

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they sort of treat them, they treat them very much

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as un property at the very beginning,

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and they're sort of very jealous of them.

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And they won't allow broad usage,

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but they're also very valuable

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because they protect un personnel in areas of conflict.

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So right from the get go from 19 46, 47,

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you got UN personnel operating,

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in conflict ridden areas in the Balkans

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or in Palestine originally,

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or, in the Indian subcontinent.

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And right from the very beginning, these symbols and,

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and the un flagger are meant to protect these person.

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And they do that very effectively, right?

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These are sold, I mean, these, these were intended

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by the people who came up with them, by the people

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who produced them to be, you know, ea easily,

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Uh, easily, visible,

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emblems of, of the un.

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And I think they performed that function.

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I think right in most people's minds eye, when they think

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of the un, oftentimes they think of these symbols.

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So they became very familiar internationally,

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and they were capable of protecting un personnel in,

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in conflict ridden areas, which I think was part

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of their original, their original purpose.

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Um, aside from that, right?

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They performed this valuable function, I think, yeah,

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probably the other point, main point I made about these

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emblems, is that,

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okay, pro provide them with all kinds of credit for,

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for protecting you and personnel.

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But, but they were also kind of nondescript.

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And again, I think in some ways

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that reflects their background, right?

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Uh, and the un emblem is actually quite hard to draw,

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or it's quite hard to embroider.

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Uh, and the colors are not dramatic colors.

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They don't really stand out all that well.

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And I think one of the reasons for that is

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that when the OSS team,

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first designed the emblem, they were looking

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for something that was quite neutral.

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Uh, and they were looking for something

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that it really didn't signify values

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or it didn't signify, you know, any kind of moral purpose

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or anything like that, or,

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or certainly any ideological purpose,

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because they realized that the UN was gonna be formed

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of a lot of different countries

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with different kinds of ideologies.

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And probably the only thing that bound them together

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for a while was their, was their antipathy toward Hitler.

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So they didn't want to, they didn't want to alienate any

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of these potential members of the un.

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So the emblem they come up with is, it's about as it,

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it's about as non-descript as you can imagine, right?

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It's just the world. It's an image of the world.

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Uh, and it has the, it has the reef.

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The reef has a, the w reef has a, has a symbolism to it.

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It symbolizes peace.

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'cause it's, it's all of branches,

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but the world itself is, you know, it,

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it doesn't signify any principles.

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It doesn't signify it doesn't have any moral value to it.

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It's just, it's just about the most basic kind of that,

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symbol that you could imagine.

Exploring Flags: History and Symbolism

00:00:00 - I have been, writing a book on Nash, on national flags. So sort of a general history of national symbolism for a long time. And in the process of doing that, I've spun off some other things on cognate, matters. and so the, this, work on the UN flag was one of those. I also wrote another article, well, actually in the process of writing another article on a black flag as well as flag of anarchism. So you, you can, sometimes when you're involved in a really big project that last year after year, you get, you pile up a lot
00:00:34 - these side projects. It's really about national flags and why such things exist, where they come from, where that idea developed. And I sort of trace that to 17th century, Holland and England. and then how they develop in different kind of contexts and what kind of themes are general and basically how ethnic and national information is relayed through these, through, through these forums, a couple of people had written books, general books on the un,
00:01:07 - although they really didn't go into detail. There were only really two, standalone articles on it. One of those was by a guy named McAllister Smith, Peter McAllister Smith, who was working in the legal context. He published his article in, I think it was the Nordic, journal of International Law. That was way back in the mid eighties. And that was sort of just an information piece where he was looking to mark the 40th anniversary of the un.
00:01:38 - by a German journalist named Shirtle Harry Shirtle. And he published in a German journal. It was devoted to the UN called Theta Nazi. And, and that appeared in 2005. but again, it was pretty brief. Like he only had eight footnotes, so on. So it, it, it seemed to me like there was a, there was a niche there that I could fill. First of all, I can start off by saying in the early forties, at the very beginning of the story, it was this sort of vague idea,
00:02:12 - of internationalism that was used as a synonym for the Allied Coalition. And it gathered against Hitler. as soon as that idea was sort of out in the ether by 1941 or so, and was being used as a, as a, as a name for the Allied Coalition. There were people, internationalist, popular internationalists, I would argue, who anticipated the formation of UN structure. And they were starting to design flags for this, for this prospective UN structure.
00:02:44 - sort of, interested in the, in internationalism and designing it, what they, what they hope would someday be a world flag. There's all kinds of people out there doing this. Identified these people with the term popular internationalism, Which I actually drew from Christopher, Andy. Christopher. Andy had written a book about 20 years ago about, tourism in the Cold War, and he had introduced this concept, which I found very valuable. So anyway, these folks are out there.

Global Flag Design and Political Suppression

00:03:14 - they're out designing these flags, trying to come up with a viable design for what they hope will be a world government or something of that sort. and at the same time, basically the foreign policy establishment in the Roosevelt administration, it's really controlled by arrival, sort of distinguishable group of, of internationalists, who I call liberal international. So I think they've been actually identified in the literature pretty commonly as liberal internationalists.
00:03:44 - They're already embedded in the foreign policy establishment. so they don't appreciate all these contributions by these popular internationalists, right? They have really no use for this. and it's quite the opposite. Not only, not only do they not appreciate the contributions, but actually in a couple of instances, they actually go out and they try to suppress them, right? 'cause their idea is that if an international symbol is gonna be devised for a, for an international organization to exist in the near future, then it should be professionals
00:04:14 - It, it should be people they pick and they should come from professional backgrounds. they should be specialists. so, yeah, again, they have, they had no use for all these designs coming in from the periphery. and the main one of these designs was popularly called the Four Freedoms flag. It's the one that caught on most with the public. And so this, if you can envision it was a, was a white field, and it had four vertical bars on it.
00:04:47 - The four freedoms, had been introduced by Roosevelt in 1941, and a famous address where he was trying to set up the basis of, of international humanitarianism. so that, that was, and this, this, this design had been produced by a, I, I guess, again, popular internationalist named Harding, Brooks Harding, and Harding Har Harding wasn't a particularly,
00:05:19 - or I don't think he was all that well educated. He was sort of a jack of all trades businessman, but he kind of threw himself into this project, 110%. but he didn't really get any appreciation in the Roosevelt administration. He didn't get an appreciation in the, in the State Department. Roosevelt himself, I don't think cared particularly for, for the design. He saw it, but, he didn't say much about it. And, the British, that the Americans consulted British, the British really didn't seem interested either.
00:05:52 - is the sort of the deputy director of the Office of War Information in the Office of War information have been set up by the Americans. They handle publicity and propaganda in wartime. And so he uses it some in some, in some instances, sort of in immediate presentations or, or, or publicity. So this idea developed in the, in the interwar period that when, when commercial businesses develop a product,

Creation of the UN Emblem by Madison Avenue

00:06:21 - and its presentation to the public at the same time that, that these processes would all be integrated. And so you had advertising specialists, specialists with background in Medicine Avenue who knew about, who knew about this technique. And they, and some of these specialists had gone to work in the World War II period for the OSS, for the Office of Strategic Services, which is sort of, that was sort of the predecessor of what is now the CIA. And these people were assigned this project.
00:06:54 - to them actually. They were actually in the OSS, they were assigned to the OSS, but they were seconded to the State Department in the early part of 1945. 'cause the State Department was working on various kinds of media projects. And once they were seconded to the State Department, they, they got this project, this project came to them. This would be like March, 1945. 'cause this has sort of been the run up to the San Francisco conference. The San Francisco conference was held in the sort of the mid-spring of 1945.
00:07:25 - So when the run up to that, this project came to them, they had these backgrounds in, in, in product branding, right? This, these were sort of these mad men, right? From Madison Avenue, right? They had this kind of, they had this kind of background. and this project came to this team, and this team was actually head by headed by a guy named Lundquist Oliver Lundquist. And Lundquist had had a background with, the, Raymond Lowy firm. Raymond Lowy firm was a famous firm on, on Madison Avenue.
00:07:59 - of the really familiar commercial products, right, that you see in American culture back in the 1930s. and then he is assigned this task with a small team to develop this, this un emblem, which they did. They then had some, you know, brainstorming sessions. And they developed this, this emblem, this familiar emblem, the world emblem in the, the world with the, with the, of olives, the olive reef below it, in, in 1945. and Staus, who was, by the way,
00:08:29 - of State by this point in time. And his main deputy attending to the formation of the UN was Alger Hess. And both, staus and Hiss liked these designs very, very much. And, and they used them quite broadly at, at the San Francisco conference. and so that got, that got the un emblem or the kind, the emblem at least, that had been developed by this OSS team off to a running start. Basically. It's an entirely, It's an, it's supposed to be an international flag, but it's an entirely American project, right?
00:09:01 - but people from Madison Avenue who have, who have, come up with the basic idea. They haven't elicited a lot of contributions from anybody else. And by the way, in general, the impression I got was that this was sort of the way that Americans hosted international conferences in the, in the World War II period. Anyway, at least in the late war period. They sort of ran them on their own terms and, and they provided all the logistical support you would need for these conferences. And these emblems originally came, or this emblem, I should say, in singular originally came

The UN Emblem: American Design and International Identity

00:09:34 - For the San Francisco Conference. So, yeah, it was an American thing. and I should go back actually to the, to the, to the bit about the, the bit about the Mad Men, you know, Madison Avenue guys coming up with the, the, emblem. It, it looked sort of like a logo, right? It looks sort of like a corporate logo, because it, it came from people who had that as a background. Couple things. So first of all, I think the UN's predecessor, which was the League
00:10:04 - or had no flag of its own. and I think that was partly because some, some, some, some, policy makers in big states back in the, in the early 1920s and 1930s, didn't want to air, didn't wanna see the league irrigate that kind of power. They didn't wanna give that kind of, structure to the league. So the UN comes along in 1945 and 46, and it is conceived, I think at that point in time as a different kind of structure.
00:10:36 - It will have its own bureaucrats, it will have its own powerful Secretary General, and therefore it deserves, or it merits having, having its own emblem and its own flag as well. So there's that. and then when, when un functionaries get control of this, this, emblem, the emblem really is sort of formally approved in 1946, and the flag comes along, it's formally approved in 1947. It's based on the emblem, obviously.
00:11:08 - they sort of treat them, they treat them very much as un property at the very beginning, and they're sort of very jealous of them. And they won't allow broad usage, but they're also very valuable because they protect un personnel in areas of conflict. So right from the get go from 19 46, 47, you got UN personnel operating, in conflict ridden areas in the Balkans or in Palestine originally, or, in the Indian subcontinent. And right from the very beginning, these symbols and,
00:11:39 - And they do that very effectively, right? These are sold, I mean, these, these were intended by the people who came up with them, by the people who produced them to be, you know, ea easily, easily, visible, emblems of, of the un. And I think they performed that function. I think right in most people's minds eye, when they think of the un, oftentimes they think of these symbols. So they became very familiar internationally,
00:12:12 - in conflict ridden areas, which I think was part of their original, their original purpose. aside from that, right? They performed this valuable function, I think, yeah, probably the other point, main point I made about these emblems, is that, okay, pro provide them with all kinds of credit for, for protecting you and personnel. But, but they were also kind of nondescript.

Design Neutrality in the UN Emblem

00:12:41 - that reflects their background, right? and the un emblem is actually quite hard to draw, or it's quite hard to embroider. and the colors are not dramatic colors. They don't really stand out all that well. And I think one of the reasons for that is that when the OSS team, first designed the emblem, they were looking for something that was quite neutral. and they were looking for something that it really didn't signify values
00:13:15 - or anything like that, or, or certainly any ideological purpose, because they realized that the UN was gonna be formed of a lot of different countries with different kinds of ideologies. And probably the only thing that bound them together for a while was their, was their antipathy toward Hitler. So they didn't want to, they didn't want to alienate any of these potential members of the un. So the emblem they come up with is, it's about as it, it's about as non-descript as you can imagine, right? It's just the world. It's an image of the world.
00:14:02 - The reef has a, the w reef has a, has a symbolism to it. It symbolizes peace. 'cause it's, it's all of branches, but the world itself is, you know, it, it doesn't signify any principles. It doesn't signify it doesn't have any moral value to it. It's just, it's just about the most basic kind of that, symbol that you could imagine.

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