Atlantic Charter Essay ⋆ Political Science Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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The Atlantic Charter was an agreement by U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill that set forth the two countries’ war aims and laid out their vision of a post–World War II world. The charter was drafted at the Atlantic Conference, a secret meeting held August 9 through 12, 1941, aboard two warships (HMS Prince of Wales and USS Augusta) anchored in Ship Harbour, Newfoundland, Canada. The secrecy was due to fears that German submarines would target Roosevelt and Churchill.

The Atlantic Conference was the first of nine face-to-face meetings that the two leaders would have during World War II (1939–1945). Joining Roosevelt and Churchill were high-ranking government officials and military officers, who discussed military strategy and the challenges of supplying Great Britain under the Lend-Lease Act (Public Law 77–11).The law, enacted by Congress in March 1941, allowed the United States to transfer weapons to “any nation vital to the defense of the United States.”

The Atlantic Charter was issued as a joint declaration by the two leaders on August 14, 1941, at a time when the British were fighting Nazi Germany and the United States was still neutral. A statement that accompanied the declaration noted that the leaders,

have considered the dangers to world civilization arising from the policies of military domination by conquest upon which the Hitlerite government of Germany and other governments associated therewith have embarked, and have made clear the stress which their countries are respectively taking for their safety in the face of these dangers.

The two nations agreed to eight common principles: (1) the United States and United Kingdom would not seek territorial gains from the war; (2) territorial changes would not take place that were not in accord with the wishes of the people affected; (3) people have the right to choose their form of government, and national sovereignty should be restored to those from which it was taken forcibly; (4) the lowering of trade barriers for all nations; (5) global collaboration to secure improved labor standards, economic advancement, and social security; (6) freedom from fear and want; (7) freedom of travel on the high seas; and (8) aggressor nations should be disarmed and a “permanent system of general security” should be established.

The principles were reminiscent of Woodrow Wilson’s Fourteen Points and reflect the “four freedoms”—freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear—of President Roosevelt’s 1941 State of the Union address.

In an August 21, 1941, message to Congress, Roosevelt asserted that “the declaration of principles at this time presents a goal which is worthwhile for our type of civilization to seek.” The Axis powers (Germany, Italy, and Japan) saw the charter as a potential alliance between the two nations.

On September 24, 1941, the Soviet Union and the governments in exile of Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Greece, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Yugoslavia, and the Free French movement adopted the principles of the Atlantic Charter. In less than three months, following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor, the United States entered the war.

The Atlantic Charter would serve as the basis for the establishment, after World War II, of the United Nations and the Bretton Woods agreements that created the International Monetary Fund and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

Bibliography:

Borgwardt, Elizabeth. A New Deal for the World: America’s Vision for Human Rights. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2005.
Brinkley, Douglas, and David R. Facey-Crowther, eds. The Atlantic Charter. New York: St. Martin’s, 1994.
Morton, H.V. Atlantic Meeting. New York: Dodd, Mead, 1943.
Wilson,Theodore A. The First Summit; Roosevelt and Churchill at Placentia Bay 1941, rev. ed. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1991.