On this date 75 years ago, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill had their first in-person meeting of the war, aboard the U.S.S. Augusta, in Newfoundland. While it was their first meeting as world leaders, the two men had actually met once earlier, in 1918, although Churchill didn’t recall the meeting.
The Lend-Lease Act had passed in March of that year, and it was clear that America would be involved in the war. At their meeting, the two men drafted the Atlantic Charter, which included eight common principles to which the two countries were committed. They agreed to a postwar world in which neither country would seek territorial expansion, and with liberalized trade, freedom of the seas, and international labor, economic, and welfare standards. Both men agreed to the need for restoration of self-government for the occupied countries.
Churchill announced the Charter in this speech given a few days later:
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