This article analyzes the disputes around the conception, creation and the first years of work of the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (BIRD), better known as the World Bank. For such, it goes back to the early 1940s when the negotiations between the United States and England for the creation of a post-war international monetary and financial architecture began. The work discusses the original propositions of both potencies, the primacy of the United States in the creation of the bank and the way the force correlations inside the USA played an important role in institution's modeling. It also analyzes the bank's trajectory between 1946 an 1960, showing how the North-American foreign policy's injunctions pressed the entity's actions and in which ways the bank inserted itself in the communism containment strategy. Finally, it discusses the economic and political factors that led to the BIRD's enlargement in the second half of the 1950s through the creation of the International Finance Corporation and the International Development Association.
World Bank; United States; cold war; development
