Church service aboard HMS Prince of Wales

The Atlantic Charter, August 1941 (part 2): for those in peril

By David Semple   

Shortly after Winston Churchill became prime minister in May 1940, his son Randolph burst in on the elder Churchill shaving in his bedroom. Here is Randolph Churchill’s account:

“After two or three minutes of hacking away at his face, he half-turned and said: ‘I think I see my way through.’ He resumed his shaving. I was astounded, and said: ‘Do you mean that we can avoid defeat?’ (which seemed credible) ‘or beat the bastards?’ (which seemed incredible). He flung his razor into the basin, swung around and said with great intensity: “Of course we can beat them. I shall drag the United States in.”

On July 31, 1940, as the Battle of Britain raged over the skies of England, the German Fuhrer made the momentous decision to prepare for a war against the Soviet Union in the spring of the following year. Hitler knew that he did not have naval superiority necessary to invade the British Isles. When Hitler’s plans to invade Britain were cancelled, Churchill found this out from decoding German Ultra transcripts. But he did not tell the Americans. During the following winter, Churchill told the Americans that Hitler planned to invade Britain in May 1941. Instead, Germany attacked the Soviet Union. In the year between the fall of France and Hitler’s attack on Russia, Winston Churchill did everything he could to bring the United States into the war.

After it became clear Britain was not going to conclude a French-type armistice with Hitler, President Roosevelt agreed to let Churchill have fifty old American destroyers, during the autumn of 1940, in return for allowing the United States to take over British naval bases in the West Indies, the Far East and Newfoundland. This was seen by some as a better deal for America than for Britain. But Churchill understood that he was bringing the American frontier eastwards into the Atlantic, including Trinidad and Greenland. German victory could only serve to isolate American in a hostile world dominated by Germany, Italy and Japan. Thus, Americans were coming to terms with reality; they must prop up the British Empire, the only power fighting the Axis alliance, in order to protect America.

The Lend-Lease Act of March 1941 provided Britain with credit to pay for the war effort. Churchill called it “the most unsordid act in history.” Lend-Lease also gave benefits to the United States. British overseas trade came under new restrictions. British overseas investments and properties, estimated by the Americans to be worth almost $14 billion, were asset-stripped and sold off to Americans at low prices. This included $55 million worth of gold held by Britain in South Africa and many British-owned corporations in the United States. In total, Britain’s Lend-Lease debt to America reached almost $27 billion by the end of the war. The United States became Britain’s paymaster from the beginning of 1941, but the Americans also intended to become asset-strippers of the British Empire.

The beginning of the war in Europe, in September 1939, heralded a full economic recovery for the United States following a long decade of economic depression. In other words, the Second World War was bad for Britain but good for America.

Britain chose the Mediterranean and the Middle East as the battlefields on which to continue the war against Italy and Germany. Churchill was determined to fight “to the last inch and ounce” for Egypt. He implored Roosevelt “not to underrate the gravity of the consequences which may follow from a Middle Eastern collapse.” In May 1941, Churchill made it clear to Averell Harriman, an emissary of President Roosevelt in Britain, “With Hitler in control of Iraq oil and Ukrainian wheat, not all the staunchiness of “our Plymouth Brethren” will shorten the ordeal.” The German invasion of Russia was delayed by over a month precisely because Hitler had to divert armies to drive the British out of Yugoslavia, Greece and Crete during April and May 1941.

Suddenly, Britain’s Middle Eastern oilfields came under threat with a pro-German revolt in Iraq. Churchill made sure it was crushed ruthlessly. However, the German army regained the advantage in North Africa. Roosevelt offered to take over the British military bases in Iceland so that Churchill could “liberate a British division for defence against invasion or the Middle East.” In addition, Roosevelt offered to send American engineers to Egypt to service aircraft and tanks about to be delivered to the Middle East. The United States was being drawn further and further into the war, short of being an active participant, yet no American declaration of war was forthcoming. A major turning point came on July 4. The Americans introduced a new policy to protect shipments of supplies to Britain. They would now use force against German ships and airplanes which attacked convoys to Britain.

“One afternoon Harry Hopkins came into the garden at Downing Street and we sat together in the sunshine”, wrote Churchill in The Grand Alliance. “Presently he said that the President would like very much to have a meeting with me in some lonely bay or other. Thus all was soon arranged. Placentia Bay, in Newfoundland, was chosen, the date of August 9 was fixed, and our latest battleship, the Prince of Wales, was placed under orders accordingly.”

Churchill wanted to settle business relating to “American intervention in the Atlantic, aid to Russia, our own supplies and above all the increasing menace of Japan.”

Churchill set sail for Newfoundland on August 4 and cabled Roosevelt, “We are just off. It is 27 years ago today that the Huns began their last war. We must make a good job of it this time.” The Prince of Wales, the ship on which Churchill sailed, had participated in the chase for the German battleship Bismarck earlier in the year. The crew of this ship had witnessed their sister ship HMS Hood destroyed during the Bismarck campaign. As recently as May 1940, the Hood was one of the ships that knocked out the French fleet at Oran.

Churchill took with him Sir Alexander Cadogan of the Foreign Office, Lord Cherwell and staff from the Defence Office. “The utmost secrecy was necessary because of the large number of U-boats in the North Atlantic,” wrote Churchill, “so the President, who was ostensibly on a holiday cruise, transhipped at sea to the cruiser Augusta, and left his yacht behind him as a blind.” Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt’s unofficial emissary to Winston Churchill, joined the HMS Prince of Wales at Scapa Flow, having been to Moscow “to obtain directly from Stalin the Soviet position and needs.”

On August 9, HMS Prince of Wales arrived at Placentia Bay, not far from the small port of Argentia in Newfoundland. So it was that in August 1941, Newfoundland became the place where the special relationship between the United States and the UK became fact and not just a fantasy of Winston Churchill. This special relationship, which is still with us today, forms the rock upon which the defence of the Western world is based. It was born with the Atlantic Charter, in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland.

“We arrived at our rendezvous at 9am, on Saturday August 9, and as soon as the customary naval courtesies had been exchanged I went board the Augusta and greeted President Roosevelt, who received me with all honours,” wrote Churchill, “He stood supported by the arm of his son Elliott while the national anthems were played, and then gave me the warmest of welcomes. I gave him a letter from the King and presented members of my party.”

Roosevelt took his British guest on a tour of the Augusta. According to Averell Harriman, Roosevelt was intrigued by Churchill “and likes him enormously”. Then began the first day of conversations between the US president, the British prime minister, US under-secretary of state Sumner Welles, the US and Sir Alexander Cadogan. These meetings, which continued until the conference ended the following week, also included staff officers of both America and Britain, “sometimes man to man and sometimes in larger conferences.”

“On Sunday morning, August 10, Mr Roosevelt came aboard HMS Prince of Wales, and with his Staff Officers and several hundred representatives of all ranks of the United States Navy and Marines, attended the Divine Service on the quarterdeck,” wrote Churchill. “This service was felt by us all to be a deeply moving expression of the unity of faith of our two peoples, and none who took part in it will forget the spectacle presented that sunlit morning on the crowded quarterdeck – the symbolism of the Union Jack and the Stars and Stripes draped side by side on the pulpit; the American and British chaplains sharing in the reading of the prayers; the highest naval, military and air officers of Britain and the United States grouped in one body behind the President and me; the close-packed ranks of British and American sailors, completely intermingled, sharing the same books and joining fervently together in the prayers and hymns familiar to both.”

Britons and their American cousins sang “For Those in Peril on the Sea” and “Onward Christian Soldiers,” ending with “O God, Our Help in Ages Past,” all of these hymns chosen by the British prime minister himself. “It was a great hour to live,” wrote Churchill, “Nearly half of those who sang were soon to die.”

John Martin, Churchill’s new principal private secretary, also found the church service moving: “You would have had to be pretty hard-boiled not to be moved by it all – hundreds of men from both fleets all mingled together, one rough British sailor sharing his hymn sheet with one American ditto. It seemed a sort of marriage service between the two navies, already in spirit allies, though the bright peace-time paint and spit and polish of the American ships contrasted with the dull and camouflage of the Prince of Wales, so recently in action against the Bismarck.”

[Part 3: A special relationship to follow. Part 1 can be found here.]

David Semple is a Manchester Tory and film maker/broadcaster from Canada. He is currently writing a book called Jerusalem and the Fall of British Imperialism. With JMA’s Richard Mather he is co-writing a radio play called Jerusalem 2017: Imperial Sunset.