The ‘Atlantic Charter’ Smokescreen: History as a Press Release

“Good words are a mask for evil deeds.”– attributed to Joseph Stalin

During both the First and Second World Wars, the nations warring against Germany and her allies portrayed their fight as a “world war for humanity.” Despite the opening of hitherto closed government archives and the testimony of political participants, the general public, with rare exceptions, still believes in these wartime propaganda images of “the good guys” versus “the bad guys.” Textbooks aimed at college students also perpetuate the old stereotypes. One example of this is the treatment afforded the August 1941 Argentia, Newfoundland conference between United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill, and their staffs, at which time the famous Atlantic Charter was released. Over forty years after the event, many American history texts portray the Atlantic conference and Charter as authentically representing the wartime aspirations of Roosevelt and Churchill.[1]

The First World War

As mentioned, in both world wars the Western Allies claimed that they were fighting for democratic rights. In the Middle East, for instance, the British High Commissioner in Egypt, Sir Henry McMahon, conducted negotiations with Hussein, Sherif of Mecca. In a letter dated 24 October 1915, McMahon promised the independence of all Arab-populated areas of the Turkish Empire (then allied with Germany and Austria-Hungary), with the exception of “the portions of Syria lying to the west of the districts of Damascus,” etc. As we know, the Arabs came to fulfill their part of the bargain. The British, and their French and Italian allies, did not.[2]

The impression that the Allies were fighting for universal democratic rights was reinforced by statements made by President Woodrow Wilson after the United States was brought into the war. On 8 January 1918, Wilson unveiled his blueprint for peace, the “Fourteen Points.” Point Five called for “a free, open-minded and absolutely impartial adjustment of colonial claims, based upon strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable claims of the government whose title is to be determined.”

Wilson expanded on this topic when he told the U.S. Congress on 11 February 1918 “That peoples and provinces are not to be bartered about from sovereignty to sovereignty as if they were mere chattels and pawns in a game, even the great game, now forever discredited, of the balance of power, but that every territorial settlement involved in this war must be made in the interest and for the benefit of the populations concerned, and not as a part of any mere adjustment or compromise of claims among rival states and that all well-defined national aspirations shall be accorded the utmost satisfaction that can be accorded them without introducing new or perpetuating old elements of discord and antagonism that would be likely in time to break the peace of Europe and consequently of the world.”

With the collapse of the Central Powers, it quickly became clear that “national sovereignty” did not apply to the colonial possessions of the Western Allies or to territories they coveted. Article 22 of the Covenant of the League of Nations “provisionally recognized” the independence of “all former Turkish provinces.” But in 1916, the British and French, without informing the Arabs, divided up much of the Middle East, and in 1917 the British introduced another foreign influence into that part of the world when they issued the Balfour Declaration supporting Zionist aspirations for the creation of a Jewish State in Palestine.

After the war, President Wilson confirmed that the war had not been born out of a fight to save democracy against the forces of tyranny, as the public had been led to believe. Speaking in St. Louis on 11 September 1918, Wilson remarked that, “This war, in its inception, was a commercial and industrial war. It was not a political war.” John Maynard Keyes likewise observed in his book, The Economic Consequences of the Peace, that “The politics of power are inevitable, and there is nothing very new to learn about this war or the end it was fought for; England had destroyed, as in each preceding century, a trade rival…”

The post-war period saw no change of policy on the part of the victorious powers. The possessions of the former Central Powers were divided up among the Western Allies and Japan, while these countries retained control of their own colonies. For example, the people of India had been led to expect a move toward independence after the Great War. But in 1934, the former Colonial Secretary and future Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, told a Joint Select Committee of Parliament: “No member of the Cabinet meant, contemplated, or wished to suggest the establishment of a Dominion Constitution for India for any period which human beings ought to take into account.”

The Second World War

On 3 September 1939, Britain declared war against Germany. The Viceroy of India, Lord Linlithgow, declared that India, too, was now at war against Germany; this was similarly the case for other elements of the British Empire. This action certainly underlined the fact that effective power still lay with the British and that their colonial subjects, even in matters of life and death, did not count for very much and were not to be consulted in matters affecting their future.

The Indian people, as well as those of other British colonies, were reluctant to believe Allied propaganda claims that the Axis powers were virtually monsters hell-bent on world conquest. The Allied crusade against fascism hardly seemed relevant to colonial peoples struggling in their own movements for independence from the British. Indeed, the precarious military situation the British found themselves in the Spring and Summer of 1940, and well into 1941, brought hope to Indian nationalists, and various Arabs such as the Egyptians and Iraquis, that their struggles for freedom had a greater chance of fruition if the Axis won. More than one foreign observer in India noted the evident jubilation there when news that Dunkirk had fallen was announced. Each of the German advances against British positions reinforced the belief of Indians, and others, that their freedom was nearer.

This is not the place to go into a detailed review of President Roosevelt’s foreign policy maneuverings in the period before formal U.S. participation in the Second World War. American involvement in a Pacific war against Japan had long been under study in U.S. military circles and Henry L. Stimson, who served as President Hoover’s Secretary of State and later became Roosevelt’s Secretary of War, had been calling for war against Japan since the 1920s. Many historians have long felt that the economic failure of the New Deal led FDR to distract public attention by focusing on alleged foreign threats.[3]

In any event, the Roosevelt Administration did gradually withdraw from a position of neutrality to one of “co-belligerency” without a formal declaration of war against the Axis powers. In the weeks preceding the Argentia Conference after which the Atlantic Charter was released, the Americans, British, Dutch, Australians, and New Zealanders held joint military discussions for Pacific operations. Roosevelt had been assured that economic embargoes would goad Japan into declaring war, and on 25 July 1941 his Administration announced that Japanese funds in the U.S. would be frozen. The British and Dutch followed suit. On 31 July Roosevelt forbade the export to Japan of aviation fuel and machine tools. An economic war was thus underway against the Japanese.

With British possessions around the globe threatened, Churchill quite naturally worked to bring the U.S. into the war with the least possible delay. Although long in covert communication with each other, it was not until August 1941 that Churchill and Roosevelt had their first personal meeting in some 23 years.[4] They met between 8 and 13 August aboard ship in Argentia Bay, off Newfoundland. While Roosevelt and Churchill discussed broad policy questions, their respective military advisers outlined strategy. Full details of the discussions held by Generals Marshall and Arnold and Admirals Stark and King of the United States with their British counterparts General Dill, Admiral Pound, and Vice Air Chief Freeman have yet to be released. It is known that they discussed the possibility of sending a U.S. expeditionary force to seize the Azores and an Anglo-American operation to take the Canary and Cape Verde Islands. As John Costello revealed in his recent book, The Pacific War, agreement was reached for the U.S. to build up the Philippines as a base for operations directed against Japan. It was believed that the new long-range American B-17 bombers would permit crippling strikes to be launched from the Philippines against Japanese targets. This would allow the British to retain more naval units in the Atlantic and the Mediterranean. The British promised to operate major naval units out of the Philippines in coordination with the U.S. Navy. As Costello explains: “This went far beyond the limited defense envisioned by the RAINBOW 5 War Plan, or even Churchill’s hope in April that ‘modest arrangements’ could be made to increase Anglo-American strength in the Far East.” The British historian points out that Churchill was disappointed that he was unable to persuade the U.S. Navy to send warships into the Mediterranean and to begin convoying British ships across the Atlantic, but that “when it came to the Far East, it was apparent that there had been a significant revision of American planning toward the strong deterrent strategy in the Far East that the British had failed to achieve during the spring [1941] staff talks.”[5]

On the day the conference concluded, the U.S. House of Representatives passed by only one vote the bill to continue the draft and to federalize the National Guard units. Public opinion polls indicated that 75 percent of American adults were still opposed to going to war against Germany. In light of his domestic political situation, Roosevelt informed Churchill that he could not formally declare war at this time: “I may never declare war; I may make war. If I were to ask Congress to declare war they might argue about it for three months.” By the Fall of 1941, the U.S. Navy was already in a state of undeclared war with Germany and the pressure was being increased against Japan.[6]

The commitments made at the Argentia Conference could not be revealed, so for public consumption the Atlantic Charter (or Declaration) was issued. Although it was, and still is, portrayed as a serious, historic statement of policy, it took the form of a publicity hand-out, merely mimeographed and released to the press.

The Charter had eight articles:

Article I stated that the two powers “seek no aggrandizement, territorial or other.”

Article II stated that “They desire to see no territorial changes that do not accord with the freely expressed wishes of the peoples concerned.” This was a reiteration of the principle of self-determination of nations brought over from the era of Woodrow Wilson.

Article III said: “They respect the rights of all peoples to choose the forms of government under which they will live; and they wish to see sovereignty and self-government restored to those who have been forcibly deprived of them.”

Article IV promised equal access on equal terms to the trade and raw materials of the world needed for economic prosperity.

Article V was another pledge to collaborate with all nations economically “with the object of securing for all improved labor standards, economic advancement and social security.”

Article VI said that after the destruction of the Nazi tyranny, they hoped to see established a peace “which will afford to all nations the means of dwelling in safety within their own boundaries and which will afford assurance that all men in all lands may live out their lives in freedom from fear and want.”

Article VII dealt with freedom of the seas, and

Article VIII advocated general disarmament and a “wider permanent system of general security.”[7]

It is understandable that expectations were thus raised among people within the Western colonial sphere of control, as well as in Axis-occupied portions of Europe. At the time it was handed to the press, Roosevelt said that the Charter meant “the ending of special privileges for the few and the preservation of civil liberties for all.” On 24 August, Churchill made a radio speech broadcast worldwide, in which he stated: “This was a meeting which marks for ever in the pages of history the taking up by the English-speaking nations amid all this peril, tumult, and confusion, of the guidance of the fortunes of the broad toiling masses in all the continents, and our loyal effort, without any clog of selfish interest, to lead them forward out of the miseries into which they have been plunged, back to the broad high road of freedom and justice.” In this same broadcast, the British warlord explained that “We had the idea when we met there – the President and I – that without attempting to draw final formal peace aims and war aims, it was necessary to give all peoples, and especially the oppressed and conquered peoples a simple rough and ready war-time statement of the goal towards which the British Commonwealth and the United States mean to make their way and thus make a way for others to march with them upon a road which will certainly be painful and may be long.”[8]

Clement Atlee, chief of the British Labour Party and Lord Privy Seal in the Churchill government, stated a few days after the release of the Charter: “Thursday’s declaration will be equally applicable to all races, including Asiatics and Africans.” U.S. Secretary of State Cordell Hull said that it was “the statement of basic ideas of policies that are universal in their application.” At a press conference held aboard the presidential yacht Potomac, Roosevelt pointed out that “not a single continent went undiscussed at the conference at sea.”

Of course, such wonderful liberal sentiments had been bandied about before. They were an essential part of the founding and continuing rhetoric of the League of Nations. But the history of the League was in fact full of special “reservations” as well as outright repudiations of promises, where the interests of the established Great Powers were directly involved. It should be recalled that at its peak in 1933, the British Empire covered some 12.2 million square miles – 23.85 percent of the earth’s land surface – with a population of nearly 502 million, nearly a quarter of the world population. As D.K. Fieldhouse remarked, “This immense agglomeration was the product of three centuries of expansion during which every place the British had occasion to annex, apart from the United States, had been preserved in the imperial museum. As a whole it had no unity of character or function… Such a multiplicity of possessions had nothing in common but their subjection.”[9]

In the United States, the Atlantic Charter was reviewed by Robert M. Hutchins, Chancellor of the University of Chicago. Referring to the demand for the restoration of the status quo in European countries that had been victims of aggression during the war, he asked, “… and what do we do about the countries which were victims of aggression before 1939? What do we do about Hong Kong, the Malaya States, the Dutch East Indies, French Indo-China, Africa, and above all, India?” He went on to charge that the Atlantic Charter provisions should be unhesitatingly applied throughout the world and that hopes “held out to India during the last war, disappointed after it, and now held out again, must be fulfilled.”[10]

One of Roosevelt’s staunchest supporters, Senator Reynolds, asked: “Why don’t Britain and the U.S. start imposing the Four Freedoms in India straight away?” This theme was taken up by Wendell Willkie and was the subject of numerous newspaper editorials across America. Even the president’s wife Eleanor sent her husband a report sharply critical of Britain’s India policy in particular and colonial policy in general, and asked for Franklin’s comment. The President replied, “I can have no thoughts about India.”[11]

Any notion that the provisions of the Atlantic Charter might apply to India and other British colonial possessions were quickly dashed. The British government’s position was clarified when on 9 September 1941, Churchill told the House of Commons:

The Joint Declaration does not try to explain how the broad principles proclaimed by it are to be applied to each and every case which will have to be dealt with when the war comes to an end. It would not be wise for us, at this moment, to be drawn into laborious discussions on how it is to fit all the manifold problems with which we shall be faced after the war.

The Joint Declaration does not qualify in any way the various statements of policy which have been made from time to time about the developments of constitutional government in India, Burma, and other parts of the British Empire… At the Atlantic meeting we have had in mind, primarily, the restoration of the sovereignty, self-government, and natural life of the States and nations of Europe now under the Nazi yoke… so that is quite a separate problem from progressive evolution of self-governing institutions in the regions and peoples which owe allegiance to the British Crown.[12]

The Secretary of State for India, L.S. Amery, reported that the Government did not consider the Atlantic Charter to be relevant to India and other parts of the Empire. Speaking at Manchester on 20 November 1941, Amery declared that while the Indian Congress “has demanded that India’s future constitution should be settled by a Constituent Assembly, this is an impossible demand,” and went on to deplore “the clamour for the application of the Atlantic Charter to India,” which he described as “a typical example of loose thinking.”[13]

The London News Chronicle pointed out that “What the British Government will gladly concede to Yugoslavia, it will withhold from the jewel of the British Empire.” The paper went on to characterize the Atlantic Charter as a “symbol of hypocrisy.”

A Member of Parliament, Reginald Sorensen, said that “The Charter does need bold, unequivocal interpretation effectively to prevent suspicion and distrust. Unfortunately, there has already been cause for distrust and discouragement.” On another occasion, Sorensen remarked that “the position should have been dearly stated as the right of all peoples, if not at present under the British flag, to choose their form of government.”[14]

Another of the British Prime Minister’s Parliamentary critics, Mr. MacGovern, called Churchill “a self-confessed advocate of aggression.” He went on to say that in his estimation “the Atlantic Charter was one of the grossest pieces of deceit in modern times,” because Churchill was prepared to apply it to countries overrun by Hitler “while the independent government which it proposes to give them is denied to territories that have been overrun in the past by Britain herself.”[15]

The refusal of the British government to apply the Atlantic Charter to its colonies underlined the hypocrisy of demanding that the people of India and other areas participate in the war to regain the freedom of some parts of the world, yet at the same time denying those rights to the subjects of countries ruled by members of the Western Alliance. Pandit Hirday Nath Kunzru, addressing a meeting of the United Provinces Liberal Association, voiced the feelings of many in the Empire when he said: “We must make it clear that we cannot allow ourselves to be used as tools of imperialism. We cannot, while helping other nations in attaining their freedom, be oblivious of our duty to enable our own country to achieve freedom.” Sir Sarvapali of India declared that “this war is an Imperialist war for the defense of this struggling ramshackle system of domination, finance, trade, and tradition: the British Empire.”

The failure to implement the Atlantic Charter goes far to explain why many nationalists in the areas controlled by Western powers, such as Indian leader Subhas Chandra Bose, looked to the Axis, especially Germany and Japan, for assistance in the liberation of their lands.[16] The view of these nationals, who ended up cooperating with the Axis Powers, was well summarized in the journal Azad Hind [Free India]:

The British Empire is an institution of slavery. It has caused utter destitution, degradation and humiliation to millions of people. It has instituted the most vicious system of exploitation the world has ever seen. It has caused innumerable wars between nations during the last two centuries. No demagogy, no chicanery, can alter these essential facts. And no reform measure can improve the miserable and inhuman conditions that exist in the colonies. British imperialists, who have invested there a large amount of capital and derive from that a huge profit every year, are not, and never will be inspired by any philanthropic motive, whatever their Labour valets may say. The only salvation of the colonial people, and as a matter of fact, of the entire world, can come only when this slave institution, called the British Empire, is completely destroyed. And it will be destroyed only when India, the pivot on which the Empire rests, strikes hard. Once India goes, the Empire also goes. Indian people are conscious of their great mission. And the final hour of British imperialism approaches nearer every day.[17]

Although the Allies, including Stalin’s Russia, continued throughout the war to invoke the principles embodied in the Atlantic Charter, those principles were in practice ignored as the Allies issued their “Unconditional Surrender” policy in February 1943, and later as the United States and Britain consented to the Soviet seizure of the Baltic states and portions of Poland. William Henry Chamberlin, in his still-useful survey of this chapter of modern history, commented that with the Yalta accords “The leaders of the Axis could scarcely have surpassed the cynicism of Roosevelt and Churchill in throwing over allies like Poland and China.” Chamberlin further noted that “when the Atlantic Charter pledges of self-determination and equality of economic opportunity were most obviously and crudely violated voices of protest were few and timid.”[18]

As for the British Empire, its end was brought about not by the application of war-time promises about self-determination and an end to tyranny, but rather by the enervating consequences of Britain’s second war against Germany within the first half of the twentieth century.[19] Britain, as well as France, paid an especially high price for having participated in the two world wars. Far from “winning” anything other than illusory victories in two phony wars, the British and French were chief among the real losers of the real wars. Today, nearly forty years after the end of the crusade to fight fascism, they are but a shadow of what they were before the war began.

Notes