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Historic Document
The Atlantic Charter
In the summer of 1941, America was still technically neutral in the European war that had been underway since 1939. But given her naval and materiel support of Britain, neutrality was, in fact, a technicality.
Hard against a rock, Britain wanted America to weigh into the war officially, and Prime Minister Winston Churchill wasted no opportunity to hone his close and personal relationship with President Franklin Roosevelt. One of the things on which they could largely agree was their view of a post-war world free of totalitarianism and armed aggression ... a view which mysteriously ignored the fact of Stalin's Russia which, having been attacked by Germany two months before, was now in play. On August 9, 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill met aboard ship in Newfoundland to coordinate their worldview (and secretly allow their military brass to discuss the future.) The discussions led to the press release loosely called the Atlantic Charter, which espouses the basic tenets of democracy buffered by a healthy dollop of Roosevelt's social activism, and urges a post-war disarmament which curiously enough could only be gained through the overpowering use of Allied armament. In 1942, the twenty-six Allied powers entered into a comity agreement which was expressly based upon the principles embodied in the Atlantic Charter, and which formed the foundation of the later United Nations agreement.
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