Fifty years ago, the world emerged from the ravages of the Second World War. The challenge at that time - an historically unprecedented challenge in dimension and complexity - was to rebuild economic stability in a world of pervasive disorder and massive dislocation, to restore a sense of world community and to establish the basis for future growth and prosperity. The architects of the new system had to build from the ground up, on multiple fronts simultaneously, and they showed vision and far-sightedness. After five decades of progress built upon the foundations laid at that time, it is easy to take for granted today what then was novel and imaginative. The latter half of the 1940s was not just about the end of the most destructive war ever waged; it was also about the curbing of destructive economic nationalism and the search for a new global order.