The Secret Meeting and the Atlantic Charter

In the summer of 1941, Roosevelt and Churchill agreed to a secret meeting to discuss the dete­riorating military and economic situation con­fronting Britain. Using cover stories, Roosevelt boarded the heavy cruiser USS Augusta from the

Presidential yacht, Potomac, off New London, Connecticut, and Churchill departed Scapa Flow in Scotland aboard the battleship Prince of Wales for a rendezvous in Placentia Bay, New­foundland, which occurred on August 9, 1941. Although the meeting produced what was to be called the “Atlantic Charter,” no specific prog­ress was made for either getting the United States into the war or providing additional war materiel to Britain, but the “Atlantic Charter” contained eight separate points on which the two agreed, including that “Nazi tyranny” must be destroyed, a statement that was well outside the parameters of the neutrality position of the United States. It also cemented the coalition between the United States and Great Britain for the difficulties that lay ahead. Based on the totality of the agreement, it is commonly concluded that this document also formed the basis of what was to become the United Nations.

In the months that followed, Churchill con­tinued his ardent dialogue with Roosevelt for ever increasing participation by the United States in the European war theater, but it was not until December 7, 1941, that the United States became fully committed to World War II. For on that day the Empire of Japan, using aircraft launched from six aircraft carriers located to the northwest of Hawaii, carried out air strikes against the naval and air facilities at Pearl Harbor, resulting in over

2,0 servicemen deaths and the near destruction of the American battleship fleet at anchor there. Fortuitously, all American aircraft carriers, with their full complement of aircraft, officers, and men, were at sea.