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1. - CLASS SET - June 1945- The United Nations (UN) is formed 1945-52- The US occupation of Japan 1946- The Nuremberg Trials In June 1945, America was one of the 50 countries that came together to establish the United Nations, an international organization based in New York City and intended to protect its members against aggression. The UN’s Security Council (which would investigate and solve international problems) was set up to have five permanent members– the victorious Allies (Britain, US, China, France, and USSR). Each of the permanent members of the Council would have the power to veto any Security Council action. At the end of the war, not only was Japan suffering from the damage of the atomic bombs and the seizure of its colonial empire, but it was also placed under US occupation, with General Douglas MacArthur in charge. The country underwent demilitarization (the disbanding of armed forces) and democratization (the creation of a democratic government), its former Premier Hideki Tojo and six other officials hanged after a series of war trials, and the sacred position of Japanese emperor was reduced to that of a constitutional monarch. Throughout this process, America sent very little economic aid to Japan, due largely to its lingering bitterness from the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. The Allies put the remaining high-ranking Nazis on trial in the city of Nuremberg, Germany in 1946 in an attempt at justice for the war’s victims. The Nazi officials were charged with starting a war of aggression and, addressing the Holocaust, committing “crimes against humanity.” Although men like Hitler, SS chief Heinrich Himmler, and Minister of Propaganda Joseph Goebbels had committed suicide at the war’s end, twenty-two other important officials were tried, and twelve were sentenced to death. On October 16, 1946, the guilty parties were hung and their bodies cremated at the extermination camp of Dachau, in the same ovens that had been used in the Final Solution.