United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA) was an international relief agency, largely dominated by the United States but representing 44 nations. Founded in November 1943, it was dissolved in September 1948. it became part of the United Nations in 1945. Its purpose was to "plan, co-ordinate, administer or arrange for the administration of measures for the relief of victims of war in any area under the control of any of the United Nations through the provision of food, fuel, clothing, shelter and other basic necessities, medical and other essential services". Its staff of civil servants included 12,000 people, with headquarters in New York. Funding came from many nations, and totalled $3.7 billion, of which the United States contributed $2.7 billion; Britain, $625 million; and Canada, $139 million. UNRRA cooperated closely with dozens of volunteer charitable organizations, who sent hundreds of their own staff to work alongside UNRRA. In operation for only four years, the agency distributed about $4 billion worth of goods, food, medicine, tools, and farm implements at a time of severe global shortages and worldwide transportation difficulties. The recipient nations had been especially hard hit by starvation, dislocation, and political chaos. It played a major role in helping Displaced Persons return to their home countries in Europe in 1945–46. Many of its functions were transferred to several UN agencies, including the International Refugee Organization and the World Health Organization. As an American relief project, it was later replaced by the Marshall Plan, which began operations in 1948. However, the historian Jessica Reinisch has shown that UNRRA should not just figure as a chapter in U.S. history. UNRRA's uniqueness was that it managed to bring together very different partners and models of international relief, each of which had their own history and antecedents. Founding and authority The First World War displaced more refugees than in Europeans' living memory, first from Belgium in 1914, later in eastern Europe, cf. the civil wars and new national boundaries of 1917–19. Relief was undertaken largely by private charities, often American as organized by Herbert Hoover. The Second World War seemed likely to create still more refugees, prompting governments to act: U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt proposed the agency in June 1943, to provide relief to areas liberated from Axis Powers when the fighting ended. Roosevelt had already obtained the approval of the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and China; he later obtained