Atlantic Charter

Franklin D. Roosevelt and Winston Churchill aboard HMS Prince of Wales in 1941

The Allies first expressed their principles and vision for the post-World War II world in the Declaration of St. James's Palace in June 1941.[1] The Anglo-Soviet Agreement was signed in July 1941 forming an alliance between the two countries.

US President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill discussed what would become the Atlantic Charter in 1941 during the Atlantic Conference in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland.[2] They made their joint declaration on 14 August 1941 from the US naval base on the bay, Naval Base Argentia, which had recently been leased from Britain as part of a deal that saw the Americans give 50 surplus destroyers to British for use against German U-boats although the United States did not enter the war as a combatant until the attack on Pearl Harbor four months later.

Since the policy was issued as a statement, there was no formal, legal document called "Atlantic Charter." It detailed goals and aims for the war and the postwar world.

Many of the ideas of the charter came from an ideology of Anglo-American internationalism that sought British and American co-operation for international security.[3] Roosevelt's attempts to tie Britain to concrete war aims and Churchill's desperation to bind the United States to the war effort helped provide motivations for the meeting that produced the Atlantic Charter. It was then assumed at the time that Britain and America would have an equal role to play in any postwar international organization that would be based on the principles of the Atlantic Charter.[4]

Churchill and Roosevelt began communicating in 1939, the first of their 11 meetings during the war.[lower-alpha 1][5] Both men traveled in secret; Roosevelt was on a ten-day fishing trip.[6] On 9 August 1941, the British battleship HMS Prince of Wales steamed into Placentia Bay, with Churchill on board, and met the American heavy cruiser USS Augusta, where Roosevelt and members of his staff were waiting. On first meeting, Churchill and Roosevelt were silent for a moment until Churchill said, "At long last, Mr. President." Roosevelt replied, "Glad to have you aboard, Mr. Churchill."

Churchill then delivered a letter from King George VI to the president and made an official statement, which, despite two attempts, a movie sound crew that was present failed to record.[7]

Winston Churchill's edited copy of the final draft of the charter

Printed copy of the Atlantic Charter

The Atlantic Charter made it clear that the United States supported Britain in the war. Both wanted to present their unity regarding their mutual principles and hopes for a peaceful postwar world and the policies that they agreed to follow once Germany had been defeated.[8] A fundamental aim was to focus on the peace that would follow, not specific American involvement and war strategy, although American involvement appeared increasingly likely.[9]

There were eight principal clauses of the charter:

1. No territorial gains were to be sought by the United States or the United Kingdom.
2. Territorial adjustments must be in accord with the wishes of the peoples concerned.
3. All people had a right to self-determination.
4. Trade barriers were to be lowered.
5. There was to be global economic co-operation and advancement of social welfare.
6. The participants would work for a world free of want and fear.
7. The participants would work for freedom of the seas.
8. There was to be disarmament of aggressor nations and a common disarmament after the war.

The third clause clearly stated that all peoples have the right to decide their form of government but failed to say what changes are necessary in both social and economic terms to achieve freedom and peace.[10]

The fourth clause, with respect to international trade, consciously emphasized that both "victor [and] vanquished" would be given market access "on equal terms." That was a repudiation of the punitive trade relations that had been established within Europe after World War I, as exemplified by the Paris Economy Pact.

Only two clauses expressly discuss national, social, and economic conditions that would be necessary after the war, despite their significance.

When it was released to the public on August 14, 1941,[11] the charter was titled "Joint Declaration by the President and the Prime Minister" and was generally known as the "Joint Declaration." The Labour Party newspaper Daily Herald coined the name Atlantic Charter, but Churchill used it in Parliament on 24 August 1941, which has since been generally adopted.[12]

No signed version ever existed. The document was threshed out through several drafts, and the final agreed text was telegraphed to London and Washington, DC. Roosevelt gave Congress the charter's content on 21 August 1941.[13] He later said, "There isn't any copy of the Atlantic Charter, so far as I know. I haven't got one. The British haven't got one. The nearest thing you will get is the [message of the] radio operator on Augusta and Prince of Wales. That's the nearest thing you will come to it.... There was no formal document."[5]

The British War Cabinet replied with its approval and a similar acceptance was telegraphed from Washington. During the process, an error crept into the London text, but it was subsequently corrected. The account in Churchill's The Second World War concluded, "A number of verbal alterations were agreed, and the document was then in its final shape." It made no mention of any signing or ceremony. Churchill's account of the Yalta Conference quoted Roosevelt saying of the unwritten British constitution that "it was like the Atlantic Charter – the document did not exist, yet all the world knew about it. Among his papers he had found one copy signed by himself and me, but strange to say both signatures were in his own handwriting."[14]

The Allied nations, who had met in June, and leading organizations quickly and widely endorsed the charter.[15] At the subsequent meeting of the Inter-Allied Council in London on 24 September 1941, the governments-in-exile of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, and Yugoslavia, together with the Soviet Union and representatives of the Free French Forces, unanimously adopted adherence to the common principles of policy set forth by Britain and United States.[16] On 1 January 1942, a larger group of nations, which adhered to the principles of the Atlantic Charter, issued a joint Declaration by United Nations, which stressed their solidarity in the defence against Hitlerism.[17]

World map of colonization at the end of the Second World War in 1945

The Axis powers, particularly Japan, interpreted the diplomatic agreements as a potential alliance against them. In Tokyo, the Atlantic Charter rallied support for the militarists in the Japanese government, which pushed for a more aggressive approach against the United States and Britain.

The British dropped millions of flysheets over Germany to allay fears of a punitive peace that would destroy the German state. The text cited the charter as the authoritative statement of the joint commitment of Britain and the United States "not to admit any economical discrimination of those defeated" and promised that "Germany and the other states can again achieve enduring peace and prosperity."[18]

The most striking feature of the discussion was that an agreement had been made between a range of countries that held diverse opinions, which accepted that internal policies were relevant to the international problem.[19] The agreement proved to be one of the first steps towards the formation of the United Nations.

The problems came not from Germany and Japan but from those of the allies that had empires and resisted self-determination, especially the United Kingdom, the Soviet Union, and the Netherlands. Initially, Roosevelt and Churchill appeared to have agreed that the third point of Charter would not apply to Africa and Asia. However, Roosevelt's speechwriter, Robert E. Sherwood, noted that "it was not long before the people of India, Burma, Malaya, and Indonesia were beginning to ask if the Atlantic Charter extended also to the Pacific and to Asia in general." With a war that could be won only with the help of those allies, Roosevelt's solution was to put some pressure on Britain but to postpone the issue of self-determination of the colonies until after the war.[20]

The participants in the conference were:[32]

 United States

• President Franklin D. Roosevelt
• Admiral Ernest J. King, US Navy
• Admiral Harold R. Stark, US Navy
• General George C. Marshall, US Army
• Presidential adviser Harry Hopkins

 United Kingdom

• Prime Minister Winston Churchill
• General Sir John Dill, British Army
• Admiral Sir Dudley Pound, Royal Navy

• Allies of World War II
• Diplomatic history of World War II
• Fourteen Points
• List of Allied World War II conferences
• History of the United Nations
• United Kingdom–United States relations

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Wikimedia Commons has media related to Atlantic Charter.

Wikisource has original text related to this article: The Atlantic Charter

• BBC News
• The Atlantic Conference from the Avalon Project
• Letter from The Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley to the US Secretary of State TEHRAN, 14 April 1945. Describing meeting with Churchill, where Churchill vehemently states that the UK is in no way bound to the principles of the Atlantic Charter.
• The Atlantic Charter