The Second World War confronted the League of Red Cross Societies with a set of challenges and opportunities that would allow it to re-cast its position as a humanitarian institution. This chapter focuses on the League’s decisive meeting in Oxford in July 1946, when the Board of Governors set out a bold agenda for the post-war world and sought to establish the institution as the leading voice in the Red Cross movement. The chapter explores how these ambitions played out over the remainder of the decade, as Cold War tensions re-set the international order. The League consciously strengthened its democratic credentials, establishing membership criteria, and reinforcing its normative / ideological foundations through the enunciation of a new set of Red Cross ‘principles’. It likewise built on its wartime experience to mount its first independent relief operation in Palestine in 1948. The years also witnessed a vital shift within the institution, with the once dominant Americans giving way to Scandinavians. This was critical at a time when the Red Cross needed to maintain the confidence of National Societies from the socialist bloc and the emergent Global South.