Atlantic Charter

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Winston Churchill's edited copy of the final draft of the Atlantic Charter.

The Atlantic Charter was a published statement agreed between the United Kingdom and the USA. It was intended as the blueprint for the world after World War II, and turned out to be the foundation for many of the international treaties and organizations that currently shape the world. The United Nations, General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), the post-war independence of British and French possessions, and much more is derived from the Atlantic Charter.

It was drafted at the Atlantic Conference (codenamed Riviera) by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt, aboard warships in a secure anchorage in Ship Harbour, Newfoundland and was issued as a joint declaration on 14 August 1941. This statement was drafted and agreed while the British were fighting in World War II against Nazi Germany, however, there was no formal, legal document entitled "The Atlantic Charter". The term "Atlantic Charter" was coined by the Daily Herald, a London newspaper, after the joint declaration had been published. The United States did not enter the War until the Attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. Potentially, it would detail the goals and aims of the Allied powers concerning the war and the post-war world. The ideals expressed through the eight points of the Atlantic Charter were so popular that the Office of War Information printed 240,000 posters of it in 1943, which was OWI Poster No. 50. Additionally, it might also be seen as a "changing of the guard" from Britain to the United States as the world's leading power.

Course of events

Roosevelt and Churchill during Church services aboard HMS Prince of Wales.

As a cover story, a flag day was enacted at Upper Street, filmed, and then broadcast while Churchill had already set off for the conference using, for the first part of the journey, the Great Central Railway. Embarking at Thurso, he then boarded HMS Prince of Wales at Scapa Flow. Though the ship had to make multiple course changes to avoid U-boats and lost her escorts to bad weather, Churchill found the voyage restful, reading novels, watching films and losing unmercifully at backgammon to Harry Hopkins.

On the morning of Saturday, 9 August 1941 the Prince of Wales sailed into Placentia Bay down a line of US ships to the USS Augusta where Roosevelt—who, like Churchill, had left Washington under a cover story (he was supposedly in New England on a ten-day fishing trip)^[1]—his son and his chiefs of staff were waiting. On first meeting, Churchill and Roosevelt were silent for a moment until Churchill said "At long last, Mr. President.", to which Roosevelt replied "Glad to have you aboard, Mr. Churchill". Churchill then delivered to the president a letter from King George VI and made an official statement which, despite two attempts, a sound-film crew present failed to record.

Whilst the chiefs of staff and head of state and head of government met, Churchill's bodyguard Walter Thompson was shown round the ship and lunched with the president's bodyguard Mike Reilly. The following day, Sunday, August 10, a church parade was held on Prince of Wales. From a lectern draped in British and U.S. flags, and with a congregation and naval clergy drawn from both nations, hymns selected by Churchill were sung with the sound of the patrolling US aircraft overhead in the background. Walter Thompson was personally presented to the president by Churchill on the last day of the conference.

As the Prince of Wales departed, sailors from both navies lined their ships, the national anthem of the United States was played and Churchill stood at the salute until the whole line of U.S. warships had been passed. The ship then set off for Iceland, on a convoy route. Passing twice through the three lines of a convoy so that it could be reviewed by Churchill, stopping at Iceland for the troops there to be reviewed, and making two more course changes against suspected U-boats, the ship then arrived back at Scapa Flow. Churchill took a train back to London, where he was met by his wife and some of his cabinet members.

The Atlantic Charter was an agreement made by Roosevelt and Churchill, which set goals for the postwar world. It agreed to seek no territorial gain from the war. It was made to keep "the right of all peoples to choose the form of government under which they will live", and "a permanent system of general security".

Content

The Atlantic Charter established a vision for a post-World War II world, despite the fact that the United States had yet to enter the war. The participants hoped that the Soviet Union would adhere as well, after having been attacked by Nazi Germany in June 1941 in defiance of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact.

In brief, the eight points were:

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 peoples had a right to self-determination.
4. Trade barriers were to be lowered.
5. There was to be global economic cooperation and advancement of social welfare.
6. Freedom from want and fear.
7. Freedom of the seas.
8. Disarmament of aggressor nations, postwar common disarmament.

Point Four, with respect to international trade, consciously emphasized that both "victor [and] vanquished" would be given market access "on equal terms." This was a repudiation of the punitive trade relations that were established in Europe post-World War I, exemplified by the Paris Economy Pact.

Origin of the name

At the time of its agreement and promulgation, it was headed "Joint Declaration by the President and the Prime Minister" and was generally known as the "Joint Declaration". The name "Atlantic Charter" is believed to have been first coined by the Daily Herald newspaper, but was used by Churchill in Parliament on 24 August 1941, and has since been generally adopted.

No signed document

Although official statements and government documents indicate that Churchill and Roosevelt signed the Atlantic Charter, it is clear that in fact there was no formally signed document. H V Morton, who was with Churchill's party, states that no signed version ever existed. The document was threshed out through several drafts and the final agreed text was telegraphed to London and Washington. The British War Cabinet replied with its approval and a similar acceptance was telegraphed from Washington. During this process, an error crept into the London text, but this was subsequently corrected. The account in Churchill's The Second World War concludes "A number of verbal alterations were agreed, and the document was then in its final shape", and makes no mention of any signing or ceremony. Archives at the FDR Library show that at a press conference in December 1944, Roosevelt admitted that, "Nobody signed the Atlantic Charter." In Churchill's account of the Yalta Conference he quotes 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."

Reaction

World map of colonialism at the end of the Second World War in 1945.

At the subsequent Inter-Allied Meeting in London on September 24, 1941, the governments of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, and representatives of General Charles de Gaulle, leader of the Free French, unanimously adopted adherence to the common principles of policy set forth in the Atlantic Charter.

The Axis Powers interpreted these diplomatic agreements as a potential alliance against them. In Tokyo the Atlantic Charter rallied support for the militarists in the Japanese government, who pushed for a more aggressive approach against the US and Britain.

The agreement proved to be one of the first steps towards the formation of the United Nations^[2].

Public opinion in the UK and Commonwealth was delighted with the principles of the meetings but disappointed in the fact that the US was not entering the war. Churchill himself admitted that he had hoped the US would finally decide to commit itself. On the other hand American public opinion was delighted with the principles but upset over the fact they seemed to be pushed even closer to war. Supporters and opponents alike had both views.

The acknowledgment that all peoples had a right to self-determination gave hope to independence leaders in British colonies (e.g., India^[3]) and elsewhere (e.g., Ho Chi Minh in French Indo-China^[4]) that they might expect progress on their demands for national autonomy. Whether this was the intent of either Churchill or Roosevelt is uncertain.

Several issues of how to implement the charter were left open.^[5]

In a speech in September 1941 Churchill stated that the Charter was only meant to apply to states under German occupation, and certainly not to the peoples who formed part of the British Colonial Empire.^[6]

The Charter was not a final version of political structure that would be established after successful defense against Nazi aggression. Churchill was unhappy with the inclusion of references to peoples right to "self-determination" and stated that he considered the Charter an "interim and partial statement of war aims designed to reassure all countries of our righteous purpose and not the complete structure which we should build after the victory."^[7] An office of the Polish Government in Exile wrote to warn Władysław Sikorski that if the Charter was implemented with regards to national self-determination, it would make the desired Polish annexation of Danzig, East Prussia and parts of German Silesia impossible, which led the Poles to approach the UK asking for a flexible interpretation of the charter.^[8]

The position taken by Churchill was that the Charter had no legal validity and that in any case it was not applicable to the enemy nations such as Germany^[9] and he strongly rejected its universal applicability when it came to the self-determination of subject nations such British India.^[10] Due to the importance of the U.S.-UK Alliance President Roosevelt chose to support the British position, something which would generate strong anti-American feelings in India and led many to complain about double standards.^[11] Mohandas Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi would in 1942 write to president Roosevelt: "I venture to think that the Allied declaration that the allies are fighting to make the world safe for the freedom of the individual and for democracy sounds hollow so long as India and for that matter Africa are exploited by Great Britain..."^[12]

During the war Churchill also argued for a watered out interpretation of the charter for the purpose of denying the Baltic states the right to self-determination and territorial integrity.^[13] In March 1944 the U.S. finally accepted Churchills view that the charter did not apply to the Baltic states.^[14]

Anglo-American dismissal of the charter, such as its clause for national self-determination shown for example by the territorial dismemberment of Germany and the organized population expulsions from their homelands, led to the following statement in the House of Commons on March 1, 1945:^[15]

Notes

See also

• List of World War II conferences
• Bretton Woods system
• Lend-Lease
• League of Nations
• United Nations Monetary and Financial Conference
• United Nations

References

• Atlantic Meeting, H V Morton, published by Methuen, 1943
• Douglas G Brinkley and David Facey-Crowther, eds. The Atlantic Charter (1994)
• The Second World War, Winston Churchill (1950)

External links

Wikimedia Commons has media related to: Atlantic Charter

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

• The Atlantic Conference
• BBC News
• The Atlantic Charter (1941) from the U.S. Department of State International Information Programs
• The Atlantic Conference from the Avalon Project
• USS Augusta web site
• U.S. National Archives image of original document
• Letter from The Ambassador Patrick J. Hurley to the U.S. Secretary of State TEHRAN, April 14, 1945. Describing meeting with Churchill, where Churchill vehemently states that the U.K. is in no way bound to the principles of the Atlantic Charter.
• The Atlantic Charter