Time is the motion of particles relative to each other. From a scientific perspective, without motion and without matter there is no time. If the material universe had a beginning, time as we know it began when the universe began. But science can postulate no such beginning.

None of us, including scientists, grasps reality whole, and within their incomplete knowledge physicists grasp the universe as energy (E), equal to mass (M) times the speed of light (C) squared. And astronomers gather that the universe is expanding, that galaxies have been moving away from a dense configuration for the past 15 billion years.

The nearest galaxy to our galaxy, the Milky Way, would take 2 million years to span at the speed of light (299,793 kilometers or 186,291 miles per hour ).

Geologists claim the age of the sun and earth to be around 4,550 million years and that the sun is moving around our galaxy at roughly 500,000 miles per hour. One revolution around the galaxy is said to take 200 million years. Dividing 4,550 by 200 makes 23 revolutions around our galaxy since the sun and earth formed. Ten thousand years covers only one twenty-thousandth of a revolution.

Geologists describe the earth as having come together gravitationally - energy that was hot and fluid and that was cooling. The denser matter (iron and nickel) settled at the center and the less dense matter, in the form of rocks, floating to the surface. And as the earth gave off heat its outer layers cooled first, leaving Earth's interior hot and molten. Gasses bubbled to the surface, eventually to become atmosphere. When the temperature was right, gasses in the atmosphere produced clouds that contained moisture - hydrogen and oxygen. It began to rain, and water began to cover much of the earth's surface.

Among the chemicals on the Earth's surface were two nucleic acids: DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid) and RNA (ribonucleic acid). These acids could divide and replicate themselves. Biologists claim that earliest forms of life consisted of carbon, water, nitrogen, oxygen, phosphor, sulfur and other materials. Although they were not discovered until the 19th century, micro-organisms existed, presumably, and these organisms could mutate genetically - as they are doing today. Biologists claim that across many millions of years various plant-life and spineless creatures developed in ocean water, that eventually vegetable life in the form of algae transferred to land and became more complex and nutrition for creatures that crawled out of the ocean. 

Scientists calculate that more than 3.8 billion years after the earth had formed - around 85 million years ago - there were reptilian creatures, including dinosaurs, tat laid eggs. Soon after there were small nocturnal creatures that fed on insects and gave birth to babies that they fed on milk from their own body - mammals. Paleontologists describe dinosaurs as having become extinct around 65 million years ago. And they calculate that around thirty-eight million years ago primates appeared - creatures resembling those we call monkeys and apes.

Biologists speak of variation between species and within species - a specie being creatures that can interbreed. Within a specie, imprecise replications occur from parent to offspring - unlike cloning. Across a great span of time, some variations within a specie survived while other variations did not, and the process of variation produced division from one to two or more species.  

Humans (homo sapiens) are said to have lived about 60 thousand years ago in Africa. The poetic describe humans as below the angels, and indeed humans appear to be a product of earthly imperfections. Unlike angels, they need to ingest water and food, and perfect nutrients and ingestion is unavailable, so to survive they must excrete waste. Like other creatures on earth they have various other bodily functions necessary for survival - sexuality.

Like some other creatures moving about to get nourishment, humans have the ability to make choices, without which they could not have survived. And helping humans to survive has been their capacity for empathy - possessed also, as we know, by dogs, who, like humans, have survived by living in groups. Contributing to survival has also been adrenalin, anger and rage, and giving humans an advantage in survival is a highly complex nervous system and the ability to reflect. While they struggle to gather sustenance from an imperfect world, some of them can reflect on their own and humanity's contributions to that imperfection. Most of them also have a body chemistry that allows pleasure and joy, despite reflections on their own mortality. Unlike the angels, humans, like other earthly creatures, are genetically programmed to wither and die. Death has been useful for species: a means to rejuvenate, to make room for new-borns.

Early Religion

Stories and Shamans

An examination of Stone Age humanity reveals that people lived in packs: in extended families, in clans or sometimes a grouping of clans called a tribe. They moved about, scavenging, hunting game and gathering food that grew wild. They had sticks, bone, stones and twine for tools. Strangers they came upon, or outsiders they knew, they did not necessarily see as fellow humans. There was no scientific understanding of the difference between a human and beast. Ethnocentrism was extreme. Stone Age communities called themselves "the people," as if there were no other humans.

There was fear that strangers they came across might attack them, put some evil spirit upon them or steal their women, and attacks and the stealing of women sometimes occurred. This and an endless camping trip with all of one's relatives was bound to produce disagreeable moments. In Colin Turnbull's study of the people of the Ituri forest in the 1950s, published as The Forest People, we see that a community of hunter-gatherers sometimes quarreled, and a quarrel might escalate into a brawl as people took sides, with the violence burning itself out before it destroyed or endangered the community.

Rules in earliest human societies were created through discussion. There was no written law or holy book from which to take guidance. No one presumed to be above others in authority. No one exhorted the group about laws laid down by any of the spirits whose presence they felt. There were no preachers or priests, but there were shamans - another word for witchdoctor. And in Stone Age societies almost anyone could be a shaman. They claimed to be in communication with spirits, but, rather than command, the shamans merely described, or suggested, and performed what they and others imagined were cures. Shamans strutted, or danced, or made shouting noises in an attempt to display their powers. Many helped themselves to visions by using hallucinogenic drugs, perhaps from the bark of a tree. It was the community that had authority - everyone and no one. From what has been seen of such societies, it appears that, in general at least, individuals did not pray for themselves. Their work and their prayers were community endeavors. Their relationship with their gods was as a group. Individuals identified their welfare with the welfare of the group, and morality was what they found to be best for the group.

Stone Age people did have an understanding of simple cause and effect: I drink water and my thirst goes away; you hit me and I hurt; I sleep and I awake rested; I eat this root and I become sick. They were skilled in the techniques of hunting and gathering. Beyond these immediate realities they invented explanations as to how the world worked. It was through stories that people thought they understood the world around them - stories passed from generation to generation. People, it seems, wondered about the world around them, as bright children do today. Stone Age people let their imaginations run. Stone Age people did not believe in skepticism or suspended judgment. They had no idea of progression in discovery and knowledge. Their saw no progress in social organization and little if any technological progress. They did not believe in progress.

Their stories merely changed. Their stories were often fanciful and impulsive rather than systematic. Within a tribe might be variations on the same story. With free imagination as the source of the stories, across generations their stories were embellished and altered. Stone Age people told their stories without demand for consistency or empirical verification. The element of free imagination would make their stories appear to people of later ages as childlike, incomplete or absurd. But Stone Age people accepted the stories as true because these were the explanations of their mothers, fathers, grandparents and clan or tribal leaders.

Inventing Spirits

Stone Age people believed that they were living at the center of the universe, that the earth was a disk extending not far beyond known neighbors, mountains, or shorelines. They believed that all movement was the product of will. They saw insects as moving by will. They saw the sun, moon and stars closer than they were and as moving by will. For Stone Age people, will was spirit, and they saw their world as filled with many spirits. Or, to use another word: gods. This was the original polytheism.

When a person saw his reflection in the water he believed he was seeing his spirit - the invisible made visible by the magic of the water. (In modern times, Stone Age people might believe that a photographer had captured something of their spirit and for this reason object to being photographed.)

Seeing the lifeless bodies of those who had died, people believed the spirit of that person had left their body and gone to an invisible world where the spirits of the dead dwelled. And they believed that invisible spirits hovered around them.

People saw spirits as able to penetrate human bodies through the skin, nostrils, mouth, ears or other openings. Dreams, not being willed, were seen as invasions by a spirit during one's sleep. Sickness was seen as an invasion by an evil spirit, and cures were sought in the form of having the invading spirit exorcised from oneself - a practice that survived into modern times.

People saw spirits as able to invade things as well as persons. If a rock happened to have a shape that reminded one of a dead uncle it might be because the spirit of the uncle had invaded and become a part of that rock. Spirits were imagined to have taken up residence in stone or wooden idols. Spirit, they believed, was invisible and in everything.

Not yet interested in strict categories, people did not think about the difference between what they saw as spirit and what was later to be called materiality. And not having defined the difference between spirit and materiality, they believed that if one ate a portion of the body of a strong beast, such as a bear, one might acquire the spirit of the bear, or, if one ate a portion of the body of a deceased king one might acquire the special qualities of that king. The flesh of timid animals might be avoided in fear of ingesting timidity.

And not having defined a difference between spirit and materiality, Stone Age people believed that in preserving a corpse they were helping to preserve the spirit of one who had died. And they believed that they could nourish the spirit of the corpse by putting gifts of food alongside it.

Magic and Religion

Not knowing how the world worked, Stone Age people attributed everything to the magic of the spirits. Birds flying or hovering on an updraft of air without falling to the ground was magic. Lightning, thunder, rain, the tides, and procreation were magic. Fire was magic and it was spirit, for it moved itself, and, when water was thrown upon it, it uttered a cry like a slain animal.

People saw spirits as having emotion. Lightning, thunder, strong winds high seas and floods were anger. People feared the anger of the spirits and hoped to placate them with kind words and gifts through a magic of their own.

How the world came into being was explained in stories about the doings of the spirits, a common story being of a male god of sky and the mother god that was earth giving birth to gods that were atmosphere and other phenomena. The imagination of those who created the stories was limited to the world that they could understand. They spoke of gods having created humanity out of earth, tree bark and other ingredients. A god was described as having created plants, beasts and humans, and a story described why the spirits were immortal and humans merely mortal.

They believed that their gods had made the world what it is and that their society and the world would always be as the gods had made it. They had no sense of social progress or image of humanity's capabilities. The imagination of those who had a biological potential for genius, and others of normal intelligence, was limited by their culture. Had it been otherwise, modern times would have come much sooner than it did.

Limited in their view of the breadth of the world, people believed the gods had made their surroundings especially for them. The gods were their gods, and seeing their most powerful god as having their interests at heart they tended to see this god as good. When something went wrong, as in failures at hunting or sickness and death, a society might engage in a ritual to make things good again by waking up the Great Spirit. In another society, calamity might be believed to be the product of people disobeying their gods.

Unrestrained in self-confidence, they believed that if the gods could perform magic so too could they. The earliest form of religious ritual was an attempt at magic through imitation - such as painting a face on the belly of a pregnant woman in hope that the magic of the drawing would encourage birth. There were also ritual fasts or trances that were believed to invoke magic, done in order to receive from the spirits the skills needed to be a good hunter or warrior.

Also common were rituals that we call funerals. The participants wailed and cried with exaggeration to demonstrate that they cared for the dead person, fearing that otherwise the spirit of the dead person might return in anger and haunt or harm them.

Funeral ritual for some tribes included burying their dead. Some other tribes cremated their dead. A tribe in the Amazon jungle in the 20th century, the Yanomami, opted for cremation, believing that burying bodies in the ground was a horrible indignity for the dead. One of their rituals was to grind the ashes of a dead person into a soup, which they drank, believing that the dead would be unhappy if they did not have a resting place within the bodies of their relatives.

Seeing matter and spirit as the same while guarding themselves against the dead, ancient Greek warriors had a ritual of cutting off the fingers from the sword hand of an enemy they had slain, in order to prevent revenge by his spirit.

Stone Age people were wary of enemies performing magic against them. If one suffered from an illness it was often attributed to the evil intentions of someone exercising his magic, perhaps someone with whom one had had an argument, or someone from a neighboring tribe that he had recently met. One might wear a pendant made from a small stone, or perhaps a piece of copper thinned by pounding, as an object of magic to ward off evil.

And to avoid evil, taboos were created. Speaking the name of a dead king might be taboo for fear of evoking a ghost with too much power. Speaking the name of a weapon might be taboo because it would leave the weapon open to hostile magic, making it ineffective. Stone Age people took care not to let a personal object fall into the hands of an enemy, who could then use the spirit in that object to send evil against them - similar to or worse than a modern person losing his credit card.

Ritualized magic differed slightly from tribe to tribe, and the stories that supported the rituals also differed. Early in the twentieth century differences in Stone Age religions put academicians at great labor and debate. Unlike their Stone Age ancestors, the scholars were concerned with definitions. Emerging from these debates was the commonly accepted belief that religion included both ritual and myth, and the scholars created a label for the religion common among Stone Age people: animism. Their definition of animism was simple and therefore easy to agree upon: the belief that spirit permeates all.

Agriculture and Fertility Gods

By 10,000 BCE, humans had spread into virtually all habitable places on earth. In the northern hemisphere between the years 10,000 and 8,000 the last of the continental glaciers retreated. Where the glaciers retreated, agriculture began to replace, in small steps, hunting culture. In an area called the Fertile Crescent, hunter-gatherers camped alongside fields of wild wheat or barley, and cereals. Here was also the game - such as gazelles. Soon they were planting gardens to supplement their hunting. By 7000 BCE, the planting of seeds had become a major source of food. People began farming and raising animals, and their farms anchored them to one place.

Agriculture was also developing elsewhere. It was spreading to Greece. Around 6000 BCE, agriculture was developing independently among hunter-gatherers in southern Mexico. In North Africa along the upper Nile River, people were growing sorghum, millet and wheat. By 5500, people were planting crops in China. By 4500, agriculture had spread from Greece into central Europe where, by 4000 BCE, people were using a wooden plow.

By the year 4500, farming had reappeared in Africa south of the Sahara in the Niger Basin in the West. The Sahara at this time was grass and woodland with an abundance of rainfall, rivers, lakes, fish and aquatic life. People there were growing crops and raising sheep, goats and cattle.

Farming created more food, and more food made possible more people. More people kept farming communities on the brink of inadequate nutrition. And farmers were more dependent on nature than were hunter-gatherers, who were free to drift from drought to areas that had more game and wild foods. Domesticated plants were vulnerable to insect ravages in ways that wild plants were not. Archaeologists have found in the bones of children in agricultural societies more signs of malnutrition than that of people living from hunting and gathering, and the average height of early farming populations has been discovered to be shorter than that of hunter-gatherers.

Also, more populous societies lived amid a greater lack of sanitation. People were careless about their refuse, their sewage and water supply. They knew nothing about bacteria, and their ignorance was costly. They suffered from disease epidemics that had been rare among hunter-gatherers. Perhaps fewer than half of the children of agricultural societies lived past the age of ten.

Needing rain for their crops, people in agricultural societies tried evoking magic in the form of imitation. Where frogs came out when it rained, witchdoctors might croak like frogs to suggest to their gods that they should start the rain.

With agriculture came gods of fertility. Farmers knew enough about fertility to associate it with sexual intercourse. They believed that their gods created sexually, a father and mother god having created son and daughter gods, and men and women copulated in their fields as religious ritual to suggest to their gods that they should make their crops grow.

Where growing seasons passed, people saw their fertility god as having died, and when the growing season returned they saw their god as having been resurrected - the beginning of resurrection as a concept. One such god worshipped by the Greeks was Adonis. Adonis was believed to spend his annual death with the goddess Persephone in Hades - otherwise known as hell. Each year when the growing season returned he was seen to have been resurrected, and he was believed to be living in blissful union with the fertility goddess of love, Aphrodite.

In agricultural societies, misfortune was explained as the work of displeased gods, and early farmers were eager to please the gods by sending them what gifts they could. It was believed that killing someone or an animal sent that creature, in the form of spirit, to the invisible world of the gods. People saw the sending of one or a few members of their society to the gods as a good bargain insofar as it served the survival of the entire society. Or someone might be sacrificed who had been a stranger seized on some pathway or held captive from war - solving the problem what to do with a war captive, who would otherwise draw on the people’s precious supply of food.

Animal and human sacrifices appear to have been less prevalent in societies of hunter-gatherers, such as those on the plains of North America and in Australia. Sacrificing people took place among agricultural people in India, Egypt and elsewhere in agricultural Africa and among the farmers of Europe and the Middle East.

Justinian's War for the Second Coming

The Roman Empire and Constantinople (Byzantium)

By 500 CE  North Africa and Western Europe were occupied by the Franks, Visigoths, Ostrogoths and Vandals. From Constantinople a so-called Roman emperor still ruled the eastern half of the empire, to be known also as the Byzantine Empire. This empire included Greece, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine and Egypt, which were tied together by trade. Constantinople was trading to the coasts of Gaul, Spain, Africa, India and China, and it remained a prosperous city, which drew diplomats, merchants, sailors and other travelers from many parts of the globe. It was a city populated by Greeks, Armenians, Syrians a few Arabs and others. Constantinople's soldiers were largely German, and some were Huns. By the 500s most of Constantinople spoke Greek, with Latin being used only for religious, formal and official occasions. And people of the city were united by their common Roman citizenship and their Christian faith.

The emperor at Constantinople, Justinian (527-65), saw himself as the rightful heir of a rule handed down from as far back as Augustus Caesar, a rule he claimed was created by God. God, he said, had displayed his love by bestowing two gifts: the priesthood and the imperial dignity. Faithful subjects described the emperor at Constantinople as God's vicar on earth and as ruling by divine right. The emperor's Germanic subjects seem to have been most impressed, viewing the emperor as almost a god in his own right.

As a Christian city, Constantinople had many churches, monasteries and convents. It had free hospitals for the sick, staffed by monks and nuns. There were alms houses for the needy and the old -  free accommodation for the homeless. The city subsidized orphanages. And in times of increased need rationing was often introduced to help the poor.

Many of Constantinople's Christians saw the world as a vale of tears in which one should not place trust or hope. But the people of Constantinople were generally enthusiastic about chariot racing. From early in the morning, young and old people, "skin heads" and priests from all over Constantinople would converge on the city's circus to view and gamble on the chariot races.

Violence for Italy, North Africa and the Trinity

The Roman emperor Justinian outlawed paganism, including Plato's old academy at Athens, and he drove non-Christian philosophers into exile. Fearing that God might bring famine against his sinful subjects he outlawed blasphemy, sacrilege and homosexuality. He persecuted the religious community in Palestine known as the Samaritans, and he put restrictions on the religious and civil freedoms of Jews, including outlawing the Talmud, which he described as puerile fabrications, insulting and blasphemous.

Arian Christianity is derived from Bishop Arius, who led the Church in claiming that God and Jesus were separate beings. His view was rejected at the Church's first ecumenical (general) council, in A.D. 325.

Like other Christians, Justinian was expecting the second coming of Christ in the near future, and in preparing for this he wanted to unify what he saw as God's empire. He wished to liberate western Europe and North Africa from the non-Trinity, Arian branch of Christianity - the Christianity of the Vandals, the Ostrogoths and the Visigoths.^NOTE The Franks were his allies - Catholics who had converted a few decades before Justinian ascended the throne. Justinian believed that as God's chosen emperor it was his duty to create one state, one church and one law.

In the year 532 Justinian negotiated a peace treaty with the Persian Empire, centered at Ctesiphon, in order to wage war in the west - against the Vandals. The Vandals, some historians have claimed, had grown soft in the one hundred years since they had conquered North Africa. Perhaps they were enervated by the mild North African climate, by self-indulgence and by the new wealth that many of them had gained. Some have described the Vandal's military as having declined in efficiency, and their new king, Gelimer, as without military or diplomatic talent. Constantinople's historian, Procopius, was to attribute the coming Vandal defeat to God and fate. The Vandals, at any rate, were weaker than they might have been if they had formed an alliance with their fellow Arian Christians, the Ostrogoths of Italy. Instead, they had been warring against the Ostrogoths.

Rather than treat Justinian as a danger to themselves as well as to the Vandals, the Ostrogoths allowed Justinian's fleet of 500 ships, with 15,000 soldiers, to use their port in Sicily against the Vandals. That was in June, 533.  From Sicily, Justinian's military, under the commander Belisarius, invaded North Africa, and victory came fast. Belisarius defeated the Vandals by December 533.

Despite their Christianity, Belisarius made slaves of the defeated Vandal warriors. Vandals were to return all estates that they had taken in conquering North Africa, a pronouncement that inspired many claims and much litigation. Churches confiscated by the Vandals were to be returned to Catholic worship, and anyone guilty of having been an Arian Christian was to be excluded from public office. Justinian's forces seized Gelimer's treasures, and Gelimer was taken to Constantinople and displayed in the victory parade. He refused to abandon Arianism, but Justinian was charitable and granted him an estate on which he was allowed to retire.

The conquest of North Africa, however, was not complete.  Justinian's victory against the Vandals was followed by intermittent wars between his forces and the blue-eyed Berbers (also called Moors), from North Africa's hill country. The Berbers fought on horseback along a front that was too long for Justinian's troops, and Justinian's military tried to defend "Roman civilization" with defensive fortifications.

Justinian Versus the Ostrogoths

Continuing his drive to reunite the Roman Empire and to defeat Arianism, Justinian moved next against the Ostrogoths. In 536, his forces, led by Belisarius, landed in Italy near Naples, and in November Belisarius conquered that city. The Ostrogoths were threatened also by the Franks, to their north, and the Ostrogoths neutralized the Franks with a bribe, gold proving stronger than Frankish loyalty to the cause pursued by Justinian. With a group of Roman senators as hostages and an oath of fidelity from the Bishop of Rome, Pope Silvarius, the Ostrogoths abandoned Rome, and Belisarius' army arrived there in December. The city's Catholics viewed them as foreigners. They had suffered no discrimination under the Ostrogoths, but they were hopeful and filled with respect for the emperor Justinian. The Pope was also hopeful, and he broke his word to the Ostrogoths and went over to the side of Justinian.

The king of the Ostrogoths, Witigis, assembled an army of about 150,000 (mostly mailed cavalry), returned to Rome in March 537 and began a siege of the city. The Ostrogoths cut Rome's outside supply of water - the beginning of the end of Rome's great aqueducts and an end to its luxurious public baths, Rome now relying on its water wells and water from the Tiber river. The Ostrogoths tried storming Rome's wall, but failed, the city's defenders in one area throwing statues down upon the attackers. A secret group of anti-Catholics tried to open the gates for the Ostrogoths, but failed. Belisarius sent women, children and slaves from the city, whom the Ostrogoths allowed to leave unharmed. He drafted all able-bodied men in the city into his army, and joining his army were about sixteen hundred cavalrymen - mostly Huns and Slavs led by Romans - who managed to sneak into the city through the Ostrogoths.

The Ostrogoths had no navy, and Justinian's navy was giving him advantage in Italy.  Not only did he ship food and reinforcements up the Tiber river and into Rome, he was able to blockade food from reaching the Ostrogoths. A little more than a year after the siege had begun the hungry Ostrogoths lifted their siege and returned north. There the Ostrogoths and their fellow Arians, the Burgundians, blockaded the city of Milan and reduced its inhabitants to eating dogs and mice. And when the Ostrogoths and Burgundians took the city they massacred all the city's adult males, estimated at 300,000, and the Burgundians took the city's women as slaves.

By 539, food production and distribution in Italy had diminished to the extent that many were dying of malnutrition. Cannibalism appeared. Unburied corpses littered the countryside. Taking advantage of Italy's vulnerability, the Franks invaded Italy in search of plunder, slaughtering along the way.

In 540, Justinian was troubled by renewed hostilities with Persia, and he felt that he needed to throw the full weight of his forces against the Persians. That year  he sent instructions to Belisarius to make peace in Italy by offering the Ostrogoths territory north of the Po River in exchange for Justinian keeping all of Italy south of the Po. And the Ostrogoths agreed. Constantinople and surrounding areas were then attacked by bubonic plague. But the plague did not deter Justinian from continuing his efforts against the Persians.

More War in Italy

Justinian's generals south of the Po in Italy had taken advantage of their power to plunder the Italians, which turned many Italians against Justinian's effort in Italy. The Ostrogoths, under a new leader, resumed their war against Justinian's forces, and they pushed Justinian's forces southward, bypassing Rome. In the spring of 543 the Ostrogoths captured Naples, and the new leader of the Ostrogoth army, Totila, treated the city's inhabitants humanely.

The Ostrogoths advanced from town to town. The inhabitants of the town of Isaurius sided with the approaching Ostrogoths, and the town's garrison, loyal to Justinian's cause and to Catholicism, slaughtered them - passions and fear triumphing over Christian principle, as it would for centuries to come.

Totila sent an appeal to Rome's Senate, telling them that his rule of Rome would be better than Constantinople's, and he gave them his solemn oath not to harm Rome's inhabitants. The general in charge of Rome's defense responded by expelling the Arian clergy from Rome, fearing they were agents of Totila.

Around the first part of the year 546, another Ostrogoth siege of Rome began. The city's inhabitants went from eating nettles, dog and rodents to starvation. From Justinian's commander inside the city, starving Romans requested food, permission to abandon the city or that the army kill them. The commander replied that giving them food was impossible, letting the leave the city would be dangerous and that killing them would be criminal. Then after receiving payment from those who wanted to leave, he allowed them to do so, and all the civilians left except  approximately  five hundred. Some of those leaving dropped from the exhaustion. Some were cut down by the Ostrogoths, and some left unmolested.

In December, 546, a gate into Rome was opened from within, and Totila's forces rushed into the city. Justinian's troops and a few senators fled through another gate. Some within the city took refuge in churches, and a few were cut down by Totila's troops. Totila went to pray at St. Peter's Cathedral. He then had Rome destroyed, including a portion of the city's great walls.

Totila then went north to consolidate his strength there. Again naval superiority allowed Justinian to land troops in Italy, and his forces reoccupied Rome and rebuilt its walls. In 549 Totila and the Ostrogoths returned and began a third and final siege of the city. Bloody battles were fought, and the following year Totila took the city again.

In 551 the superiority of Greek seamanship and of Justinian's navy allowed Justinian's forces to obtain the upper hand in Italy. The following year Justinian's forces also seized two strongholds on the southern coast of Spain. And in 554 his armies finally defeated the Ostrogoths - the end of a costly and painful enterprise that had devastated Italy. The Pope and Catholicism now reigned supreme in Rome and central Italy - which was declared to be the work of God. The Trinity version of Christianity had won against Arianism, violence again deciding a matter of theology.

A weakened Constantinople (Byzantium)

The Trinity had triumphed in Italy, but Justinian's conquest of Italy had drained Constantinople's resources.  Justinian's wars had weakened his ability to protect his empire's northern frontier along the Danube River and his frontier in the east. From the steppes just west of the Don River came Bulgars, who raided, ravaged towns and farms north of Constantinople, and left again. From grasslands north of Constantinople's empire, Slavic tribes, speaking an Indo-European language, invaded Constantinople's empire. Some of the Slavs turned from plunder to seizing the lands of Latin-speaking Byzantine provincials and settling into farming in sparsely populated areas and on what had been wasteland. The Slavs were followed by those who in theory are considered to be a Mongolian people - Avars - traditionally herders, bow legged from the constant riding on horseback  They were warriors interested in plunder, like the Huns before them, fighting in cavalry formation, organized and disciplined.

By the time of Justinian's death in 565, much of Constantinople's imperial wealth had been spent. Justinian's successor, Justin II, was unable to prevent a Germanic people called Lombards from taking power in Italy. The Lombards had been moving south from around the Elbe River since the 400s. They reached Milan in 568, and soon after they took control of territory between Ravenna and Rome. They taxed those in Italy whom they had conquered, but they allowed the Catholics control of Rome and some surrounding territory - the Pope remaining the political leader of this area and the symbol of Roman tradition. Soon the usual assimilation between invaders and Romans took place, the Lombards adopting Latin as their language and Catholicism as their religion. And in 589 in Spain, the Visigoth king converted to Catholicism, soon followed by his subjects. Justianian had failed to reunify the old Roman Empire, but his vision of a Catholic western Europe was being realized

China from Ming to Manchu

The Ming Dynasty in 1500s

Passing rule from father to son again produced incompetent leadership. It was in 1506 that Zhengde, fourteen-year-old son of Ming emperor Hongzhi, inherited power. Hongzhi had warned that his son Zhengde was too inclined toward a love of ease and pleasure. And Zhengde became a ruler interested in entertainments such as music, wrestling, magicians and acrobatics, interested also in riding, archery and hunting, and without much interest in the affairs of state.

Zhengde became ill and died in 1521, at the age of thirty-one, and having had no sons, rule passed to one of his adopted sons, Jiajing, who was fifteen. The dowager empress and a Grand Secretary ruled for awhile. The power of the eunuchs was curbed and wealth that eunuchs had accumulated was confiscated - 70 chests of gold and 2,200 chests of silver from one eunuch alone. The economy was restored. But eventually Jiajing came of age and the Grand Secretary died. Then the government faltered as Jiajing focused on Taoism and immortality. He spent money on Taoist temples, but his spiritualism did not make him a worthy ruler at least in the eyes of eighteen of his concubines. In 1542 they conspired to strangle him while he slept. All were executed but the concubine who had warned the empress.

Jiajing did little to improve China as a military power. Frontier military colonies had only about forty percent of the number of men originally intended to guard against the Mongols and others. Interior regiments were no more than ten percent of their prescribed strength. The government was not giving military men adequate pay or rations. Death and desertions thinned the army, and many of those who were recruited into the military were unwilling to risk their lives in combat.

The Mongols in the northeast had united under a descendant of Genghis Kahn and were making raids into China. In one month in 1542 they burned homes, stole cattle and horses and massacred, it is written, over around 200,000 people. In 1550 the Mongols advanced to the gates of Beijing and looted and burned its suburbs. Assaults came also from Chinese (reputed to be Japanese) linked to illegal trade with foreigners. These men had established bases on the coast and raided or took over villages and towns up river.

It was a private army, organized by Qi Jiguang, that eventually defeated the raiders from the coast, while Jiajing pursued his Taoism. Jiajing withdrew from governing for long periods, and his Taoist search for everlasting life through potions led to his death by poisoning in 1566. Jiajing's son, Longqing, was also little interested in affairs of state. But he did expel Taoists from the court, and his minister, Zhang Juzheng, made peace with the Mongols. Longqing ruled to 1572 and was succeeded by Wanli, who ruled to 1620, for forty-seven years - the longest reign in China since the early Han dynasty seventeen centuries before.

China under Emperor Wan (Wanli)

Wanli became emperor at the age of ten, and his reign began under the leadership of his mother and Zhang Juzheng. They restored discipline and efficiency in government. Finances were stabilized, and attacks at China's border were repelled. But after Wanli came of age, and Zhang Juzheng died, the recent history of Chinese emperors repeated itself. Wanli increasingly withdrew from state affairs. Government posts were left unfilled, and people languished in prison without trial because there were no judges to try them. Wanli allowed the eunuchs to acquire influence at court. The eunuchs took tax money intended for the state treasury for themselves. Wealth was not being saved, or sufficient grain stored for relief in hard times. When an area was devastated by earthquake, flooding or drought, Wanli would order relief, but little if any relief would materialize. And desperate people were turning again to banditry and rebellion.

High taxes continued to oppress all but the upper classes. Millions of middle men were involved in tax collection, taking their cut before passing the collected wealth to the court. In some provinces half of the revenue went to support the local nobility. Some with surplus money were lending it out as usurious rates, and Wanli was spending great amounts of state money on palaces and other luxuries for his family. Wanli, meanwhile, had grown so fat that he could not stand.

China was doing well artistically, but there was little intellectual leadership advocating political and social reform. The intellectuals were supporting serenity through withdrawal or a return to traditional obedience and worthy authoritarian rule. Unlike the bourgeoisie in Europe, there was little interest among thinking Chinese in better ways of doing work through improved tools - while thinking laborers were without the means to improve their tools.

China's gentry, traditionally Confucianist and into both farming and government service, had become more alienated from government and had been turning more to Buddhism and to patronizing Buddhist monasteries. This was encouraged by factional fighting among the Confucianists and by the risks that came with power in the hands of  eunuchs. Confucian scholars disliked the decline in Confucianist standards. Confucianists were splitting into numerous factions. Numerous private Confucianist academies arose, while few if any Confucianists were finding fault with monarchy or authoritarianism itself. Confucianists continued to see salvation in adherence to proper ethical conduct rather than a change in institutions. And they continued to see commerce and the crafts as matters for inferior people.

The degree of withdrawal from state affairs by Wanli amounted to benign neglect for commerce and trade. China was producing ceramics, silk and cotton cloth. A genuine money economy was developing, and China's growing cities had a few affluent merchants. China's agriculture was advancing - with some new crops such as maize, sweet potatoes and peanuts from the Americas. This contributed to China's rise in population - to  over 100 million - double what it had been around 1368, when the Ming Dynasty began. But not much wealth was  being invested in economic growth. Rather than wealth being invested in business growth, much of it was being used in safer lending at usurious rates.  In addition to government using business as a source of wealth, and the Confucian view of commerce as dishonorable, wealthy Chinese - gentry and wealthy merchants - were spending a lot of money on consumption. Businessmen as well as the landed wealthy tended to see land as a better investment than business growth. Much of industry was handicraft in the hands of peasants, and whenever their productively increased it would be siphoned off by landlords. Also, government sponsored handicraft guilds laid down rules that inhibited competition and growth. Industries were often forced to sell to the government at prices that were too low. Business growth was hampered also by common people unable to increase their consumption.  And government continued to impose limitations on foreign trade, including forbidding Chinese merchants to go to sea.

Europeans to China

Instead of Chinese merchants going to Europe, European merchants came to them. In the middle of Wanli's reign, Dutch and English traders arrived off the coast of China. The Jesuit missionary, Matteo Ricci, arrived in China at Macao in 1582. He adopted the name Li Mateo and made himself more amenable to the Chinese by adopting the dress of a Confucian scholar, and he made Christianity more palatable to the Chinese by linking it with Confucian thought. He settled in Nanjing, and having learned Chinese and the classical Chinese literature, and showing deference to China's system of authoritarian rule and privilege, Ricci was accepted by China's scholars and nobility.

In early 1601, Ricci received permission to go to Beijing, where he presented the court with a harpsichord, a map of the world and two clocks that chimed. He introduced himself to the court as Wanli's humble subject and as familiar with the "celestial sphere, geography, geometry, and calculations." Ricci aroused interest and awareness of technical advances in the West. And permission to function in China allowed Ricci to expand Christianity there, China having more than three hundred Roman Catholic churches by 1610.

The Last of the Ming and the Arrival of the Manchu

Wanli died at the age of fifty-seven - old for someone as heavy as he. His successor was his grandson, Tianqi, who was fifteen and illiterate. The withdrawal of emperors from governmental affairs continued. Emperor Tianqi enjoyed carpentry while his court and administration was being tyrannized by a eunuch, Wei Zhongxian, who dismissed anyone from government service whom he thought might be disloyal to him.

Rebellion occurred in 1624, led by six Confucianists who were attempting a moral revival of "pure" Confucianism. They were known as the Six Heroes. They were dreamers interested in moral revival rather than organizing an armed opposition, and, like the Confucianist Wang Mang centuries before, they paid for it with their lives. They were tortured and beaten to death, and seven hundred of their supporters were purged from their government positions.

Some in China concluded that Wei Zhongxian's terror and Tianqi's passive acceptance indicated that the Ming dynasty had lost the Mandate of Heaven. Tanqui died in 1627 and was succeeded by his feeble younger brother, Chongzhen, and during Chongzhen's reign heaven seemed to be intervening against the Ming, as China suffered (with other parts of the world) from unusually bad weather: low temperatures, drought and flooding from too much rain. Also a trade depression had developed in Europe in the 1620s, which had some impact on China. All over China people were in rebellion. Militarily the emperor remained weak. And more raiding was underway from the north - not from the Mongols this time but from the Manchus, raiding from what is now called Manchuria.

In Manchuria were Chinese who had extended Chinese-style agriculture there. In that part of Manchuria called Jilin were the descendants of the semi-nomadic Ruzhen who had established the Jin dynasty in northern China in the 1100s. By the early 1600s, one among them, Nurgaci, had brought adjoining Manchu tribes under his rule. His son and successor, Abahai, ruling from the town of Mukden, gave the name of Manchu to his subjects. He allied himself with Mongol tribes, made a treaty with the Koreans and was set for an assault on China.

The Manchus were making incursions into northern China at the same time as people in China were rebelling against their emperor, Chongzhen. In 1644 a rebel Chinese force swept into Beijing. Chongzhen hanged himself. In the coming seven  years the Manchu fought battles outside of Beijing, the Manchu gaining hold of military garrisons at strategic points, and Ming supporters taking refuge in Taiwan, which did not submit to the Manchus until 1683. The Manchu's took power in  Beijing and eventually over the whole of China. ( Details provided by reader. )  China's emperors now belonged to a Manchu family called the Qing family, a dynasty that was to rule to the 19th century.   

A few Chinese chose death rather than serve the Manchu. But the Manchus - who were never more than two percent of the population in China - would be able to rule China because of the acquiescence of the Chinese. The Manchus employed Confucianism as support for political authority, promoting study of the classics and the veneration of ancestors, including the idea that a ruler rules by virtue of his goodness. And Chinese filled many of the positions in the Manchu government bureaucracy.

Manchu emperors kept military power out of the hands of Chinese and in the hands of their fellow Manchu, and they moved to prevent their fellow Manchu from being swallowed by the Chinese. Manchus in China were obliged to devote themselves to military service. They were forbidden to engage in commerce or labor, and forbidden to marry Chinese.

With the peace that the Manchu imposed upon China, prosperity and population growth returned, and trade with Europe increased. One Manchu emperor, Kangxi, ruled sixty-one years, - from 1661 to 1722 - and would be considered one of China's great emperors. He won praise from Jesuits in China for his "noble heart," his intelligence, his excellent memory, his taste in reading and his being an "absolute ruler over his passions

The United Nations

Wartime Sense of Purpose

The United Nations began with the London Declaration of June 12, 1941, when unity and a sense of purpose was felt by various nationalities struggling against a common enemy: Hitler's Germany. They declared that "the only true basis of enduring peace is the willing cooperation of free peoples in a world in which, relieved of the menace of aggression, all may enjoy economic and social security." Signing the London Declaration were Britain, Canada, New Zealand, the Union of South Africa and the exiled governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and Yugoslavia. Charles deGaulle, in exile from France, also signed. Soon after the U.S. went to war against Japan and Germany it joined this group. Another declaration was signed in Washington, on January 1, 1942, and joining in this was the Soviet Union. This was called the "Declaration by United Nations" - the  name "United Nations" coined by the U.S. president, Franklin Roosevelt. Each government pledged "to employ its full resources, military or economic" to the defeat of Germany, Japan and Italy. They agreed that none were to make a separate peace with the enemy. A number of Latin American nations joined the group, as did Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Egypt and some smaller African states.

At their Teheran conference in late 1943, Stalin, Churchill and Roosevelt discussed the possibility of a United Nations trusteeship for France's colony of Indochina (including Vietnam).  The Indochinese were to be included among the "free peoples" spoken of in the London declaration but after a wait of twenty or thirty years. In deference to Churchill a UN trusteeship for India was not discussed.   

Roosevelt in 1944 was considering running for re-election. He linked the Republicans with isolationism and argued for the United Nations. He argued that the United Nations had to be able to commit people to military action, "to keep the peace by force, if necessary" rather than wait for consultations, discussions and debates. He likened the latter to the police calling a town meeting before stopping a burglary. Roosevelt favored a blanket approval from Congress in advance. "It is clear," he said, "that if the world organization is to have any reality at all, our American representative must be endowed in advance by the people themselves, by constitutional means through their representatives in the Congress, with authority to act."

Beginning in September 1944, at the Dumbarton Oaks mansion in Washington D.C., representatives of the Soviet Union, Britain, the U.S. and China agreed on the structure of the UN. The purpose of the United Nations, it was declared, would be:

1. To maintain international peace and security; and to that end to take effective collective measures for the prevention and removal of threats to the peace and the suppression of acts of aggression or other breaches of the peace, and to bring about by peaceful means adjustment or settlement of international disputes which may lead to a breach of the peace;

2. To develop friendly relations among nations and to take other appropriate measures to strengthen universal peace;

3. To achieve international cooperation in the solution of international economic, social and other humanitarian problems; and

4. To afford a center for harmonizing the actions of nations in the achievement of these common ends.

The principles by which this was to be realized were:

1. The Organization is based on the principle of the sovereign equality of all peace-loving states.

2. All members of the Organization undertake, in order to ensure to all of them the rights and benefits resulting from membership in the Organization, to fulfill the obligations assumed by them in accordance with the Charter.

3. All members of the Organization shall settle their disputes by peaceful means in such a manner that international peace and security are not endangered.

At the Yalta conference in February 1945, Roosevelt, Churchill, and Stalin declared their resolve to establish the UN, with Roosevelt and Churchill both agreeing that the Ukraine and Byelorussia (republics within the Soviet Union) would be separate member states with their own votes in the UN. They agreed to the time and place of a founding meeting of the United Nations and that the UN would be led or dominated by the five major allied powers as permanent members of the Security Council - the U.S., Soviet Union, Britain, China, and France. The question arose about some Latin American nations joining. Stalin asked how the Soviet Union could build world security with nations that had been hostile to the Soviet Union. Churchill commented about nations that had been waiting "to see who would win," and Roosevelt apologized to Stalin for having prematurely promised these nations UN membership. He added that he was doing what he could to encourage them to declare war on Germany and that they could help write the UN Charter and become initial members when they signed the UN declaration. Stalin agreed. The question arose of a conference to discuss "territorial trusteeship and dependent areas" - in other words colonialism. Churchill became enraged, stating that as long as he was Prime Minister he would "not yield one scrap" of Britain's heritage. He was placated when the U.S. Secretary of State, Edward Stettinius, showed him a report that the United States opposed putting any colony into an arrangement without the consent of the colonial power involved.

The Founding

The conference for founding the U.N. began in April, 1945, at San Francisco. By May 1945 Roosevelt had died and tensions existed between the Soviet Union and Roosevelt's successor, President Truman. Truman had lived through some failed idealisms and had his doubts about the United Nations, but there was Roosevelt's legacy to which he wanted to adhere. He did not want a return to the isolationism that had followed World War I, and he was committed to maintaining the U.S. as a player in the new internationalism. Another founding conference for the United Nations was scheduled to meet in San Francisco, and Truman said the U.S. would proceed with that conference and that if his criticism of the Soviet Union regarding Poland upset the Russians then they "could go to hell." Truman's strategy was to put economic pressure on the Soviet Union and, on May 12, Lend-Lease to the Soviet Union stopped. But he wanted to continue working with the Soviet Union, including within the United Nations.

A survey in May indicated that 40 percent of the American people doubted the conference in San Francisco would succeed. Those believing that the UN could prevent war within the coming fifty years had dropped from 49 to 32 percent. But 85 percent still believed the U.S. should join the UN.

At San Francisco, delegates from fifty nations hammered out an agreement, creating the UN Charter. The Charter declared against wars of aggression and against wars that violated international treaties or agreements. The Charter declared against war crimes and crimes against humanity - genocide, enslavement, deportation and other inhumane acts. Articles 42 and 43 authorized the use of armed force to maintain international peace and security. Article 51 acknowledged the right of members to join together for self-defense - an issue in support of regionalism that had been advocated by Latin American countries that feared the spread of communism. Articles 55 and 56 required that "all members pledge themselves to take joint and separate action to promote "universal respect for, and observance of human rights and fundamental freedoms for all."  

The charter envisaged a regular military force available to the Security Council. The Charter could be amended by a two-thirds majority vote in the UN's General Assembly. The General Assembly was to be a place for discussion and the making of "recommendations"  regarding the maintenance of international peace and security. Responsibility to implementation was to be with the Security Council. The issue over unanimity within the Security Council was addressed by providing any one of its members a veto against any decision made by other members of the Security Council.

The UN was to be administered by a Secretary General, appointed by the General Assembly on recommendation of the Security Council, for a term of five years. He was to sit in on sessions of the General Assembly and to be able to bring to the attention of the Security Council any matter which in his opinion threatened international peace and security.

Members of the United Nations were required to pay dues.

Ceremonies for the signing of the UN Charter took place at San Francisco on June 26. President Truman flew in and spoke to the gathering, saying that he would use the United Nations as a central instrument in foreign policy. He renounced great-power dominations. Strong nations, he said, should lead the way to international justice "by their own example." Let us not fail to grasp "this supreme chance," he said, "to establish a worldwide rule of reason."

Ratification of the Charter by member nations was completed on October 24, 1945, and October 24 was designated as United Nations Day.

In November, a UN General Conference in London created the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO). Its constitution claimed that "...since wars begin in the minds of men, it is in the minds of men that the defenses of peace must be constructed." It described World War II as having been "made possible by the denial of the democratic principles of the dignity, equality and mutual respect of men, and by the propagation, in their place, through ignorance and prejudice, of the doctrine of the inequality of men and races." The solution, according to the document was education.

Members of the Security Council failed to agree concerning the creation of a regular armed force for the UN, and no such force was created. The sense of urgency and common purpose that had existed in 1941 in Europe had slackened during the peace that followed the war in Europe. 

1946, the First Full Year

The UN Charter did not address the question of independence from colonial rule, a question that was the leading cause of the violence in the world that the UN was hoping to avoid. French troops had fired on demonstrators in Morocco, Algeria and Syria. They had bombed Damascus. British troops had intervened in partnership with the French, but the French and British plan to keep their troops in Syria and Lebanon was interrupted by a request in February 1946 from Syria and Lebanon for a withdrawal of foreign troops. Both Syria and Lebanon had been  members of the UN since October 24, 1945. The Soviet Union cast its first veto in the Security Council because it considered the language supporting Syria and Lebanon too weak - an infrequent use of the veto having been expected. At any rate, France and Britain complied with UN wishes, and the evacuation of Syria and Lebanon was completed by April 15.

Another challenge to the UN was taking place regarding Soviet troops in Iran. Soviet troops had been there with British troops supposedly to keep oil from falling into German hands. In 1946 Iran complained to the United Nations about the presence of Soviet troops and Soviet interference in internal Iranian matters. On the Security Council the Soviet Union failed to get a postponement of a debate on the issue. The Soviet UN Ambassador walked out. The Security Council kept the issue alive and the issue was resolved by the Soviet Union talking directly with Iran and agreeing to withdraw.

Civil war was raging in Greece, and the United Nations investigated a complaint from Greece regarding assistance from outside Greece to Communists trying to defeat government forces militarily. A UN Special Committee was created. The fighting in Greece would continue until 1949 when the Yugoslavs, who had been supporting the Greek rebels, stopped that support.

In 1946, India complained about a new law in South Africa that commercially and residentially separated Indians within that country, India complaining that this violated the UN Charter's provision for human rights. But nothing was done to alter the course of events in South Africa.  

Vietnam had declared its independence in September. In December the French navy bombarded Hanoi, killing 6,000, and the United Nations stood by as war in Vietnam progressed and France tried to force its rule onto the Vietnamese. 

In 1946, the UN did assume responsibility for controlling international narcotic traffic - formerly a responsibility of the old League of Nations, defunct since 1942. And the UN resolved to assume leadership in promoting international machinery to study the prevention of crime and the treatment of prisoners. The UN established its World Health Organization (WHO). The General Assembly discussed the gravity of housing problems in various places in the world. The General Assembly created the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) "to assist children of war-devastated countries and to raise the general level of child health.

The United Nations resumed what had been the League of Nations Permanent Count of International Justice. This new UN body was to settle according to international law those legal disputes that states submitted to it, and it was to give advisory opinions on legal questions that "authorized international organs and agencies" sought from it. The Court was composed of 15 judges, elected to nine-year terms, with no more than one judge of any nationality.

And the UN decided to locate its headquarters in New York City, the General Assembly accepting an $8.5 million gift from John D. Rockefeller, Jr.

1947-49 and NATO

In Palestine, Britain had been ruling under an old League of Nations mandate. The UN General Assembly accepted Britain's plan to leave Palestine,  and it endorsed a plan to partition Palestine into an independent Arab state and an independent Jewish state and to make Jerusalem as an "international" city. There had been no Soviet veto regarding the creation of Israel although Stalin had been hostile toward Zionism. Stalin was looking forward to influence with the secular and left-leaning founders of Israel.

On May 14, 1948, the day that the British mandate in Palestine expired, Israel became an independent state and Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Jordan and Egypt launched attacks on what they refused to recognize as Israel. The UN was not equipped to support its creation of Israel militarily.  The United States exercised a spirit of peacemaking by putting an embargo on weaponry to Israel, but the Israelis were able to purchase weapons from Soviet controlled Czechoslovakia. Violence raged again with the UN standing by. In 1949 a UN mediator, Ralph Bunche, organized an armistice between the four-powers attacking Israel and the Israelis, and in 1950, amid hopes that a permanent peace was in the making, Ralph Bunche received the Nobel Peace Prize.

Meanwhile fighting had broken out in Kashmir between Pakistanis and Indians, a dispute rising from the partition of India that year. Violence was also taking place in Indonesia, where the Dutch were trying to hold onto rule. Indonesia had declared itself independent. There was strong condemnation of the Dutch in the United Nation, and in 1947 the Security Council ordered a ceasefire, to which both sides agreed. The Dutch renewed their war against Indonesian independence in December 1948. Under pressure from the United States in August, 1949, the Dutch agreed to another ceasefire. Without UN involvement, a conference between the Dutch and Indonesians led to an agreement and the creation of an independent Indonesia with the Dutch queen as titular head-of-state and Sukarno of Indonesia as President.

In 1948, when Stalin began blockading Western access to Berlin, the Security Council took up the issue as a threat to peace and security. The Soviet Union vetoed an attempt at a compromise solution. In January the Western powers countered with a "counter-blockade" of goods entering the Soviet sectors of Berlin. Rather than the UN it was the Berlin airlift that persuaded the Soviet Union to lift its blockade. 

Then came the creation of North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), seen in the Soviet Union as a hostile act. The U.S. State Department stated NATO's purpose as bringing about "world conditions which will permit the United Nations to function more efficiently."  The founding declaration for NATO spoke of international peace, security and justice and of intentions of refraining from "the threat or use of force in any manner inconsistent with the purposes of the United Nations." Referring to members of NATO, the declaration stated that "an armed attack against one or more ... shall be considered an attack against them all" and that NATO members had the right of individual or collective self-defense, as granted by Article 51 of the United Nations Charter.