The Bretton Woods Conference was held in July 1944 in Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, where representatives from 44 countries gathered to establish a new international monetary system. The main goal was to promote economic stability and prevent the competitive devaluations that contributed to the Great Depression. During the conference, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank were created to facilitate global economic cooperation and development. The conference laid the groundwork for a system of fixed exchange rates, where currencies were pegged to the U.S. dollar, which was convertible to gold, establishing the U.S. dollar as the world's primary reserve currency.