• 7.7: Postwar Planning and the Bretton Woods Conference

    At the end of World War II in 1945, the allied powers resolved to avoid repeating their mistakes following World War I. Participants at the Bretton Woods Conference (1944) began establishing a new global financial system that would create a new system of foreign exchange, prevent competitive devaluations of currencies, and promote international economic growth. They created the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to help countries rebuild and develop local economies which had been decimated during the war.