Seventy-two years ago today, on March 31, 1953 (February 17, 1953), Hammarskjöld of Sweden was elected Secretary-General of the United Nations. On March 31, 1953, the United Nations Security Council nominated Hammarskjöld, Minister of State of Sweden, to succeed Rye as Secretary-General of the United Nations. Like Rye's election as Secretary-General of the United Nations in 1946, this unexpected result broke the deadlock between the Soviet Union and the Western Allies. It was a major initiative supported by both the United States and the Soviet Union since the armistice in Korea. Rye resigned in November 1952. At the time, many countries accused him of overreaching the demands of the United States to ban communism and accused him of using UN salaries to satisfy the demands of illegal subversive Americans.