7. Hundreds of people participated in working sessions over the holidays
Winston Churchill brought with him to Washington a working staff of 86 people, including admirals, generals, valets, security agents (he called them detectives), stenographers, clerks and valets and other servants. Each day some, if not all, of the working members attended work sessions held in the White House. There they developed the means to accomplish what their leaders agreed to, as well as recorded the agreements. The Americans countered with a group of equal size, led by George Marshall from the Army, and Admiral Ernest King from the US Navy. Representatives from other nations also attended some of the sessions, including the Soviet Union, Netherlands’ government in exile, China, Mexico, and others. They referred to themselves as the Associated Nations during their working sessions. Neither Churchill nor FDR was pleased with the name.
One morning, FDR was at work when the name “United Nations” popped into his head. Liking the name, he rolled his wheelchair into Churchill’s quarters to share it, where the Prime Minister had just risen from his bath. An apocryphal tale relates that the naked Churchill told FDR, “See, Mr. President. I have nothing to hide”. Neither Churchill nor Roosevelt ever related the story, though in his report to the King upon his return to England, Churchill confided he was probably the only Prime Minister in history to have been visited while naked by a head of state. When the agreement from the sessions was reduced to paper and signed by 24 Allied nations, they recorded themselves as the United Nations and used that term for the rest of the war. The name was later transferred to today’s United Nations in 1945.