The League of Red Cross Societies and its Nursing Bureau

The activities of the League of Red Cross Societies (LRCS) during the Second World War, and now known as the International Federation of Red Cross
Red Crescent, are largely unknown. There are three main reasons for this omission. Firstly, the LRCS was established at the end of the First World War with a focus entirely on the peacetime work of the Red Cross. Secondly, as its Board of
Governors did not formally meet during the war, the assumption has been that it was largely inactive. And finally, there has been little historical interest in the role of the LRCS until recently. As this essay reveals, the LRCS was indeed active during the war but perhaps not in the ways we might imagine.