The Atlantic Charter, August 1941 (parts 1, 2 and 3)

Roosevelt and Churchill on HMS Prince of Wales, in Placentia Bay, Newfoundland, during the Atlantic Charter conference.

David Semple’s introduction to The Atlantic Charter, August 1941 (parts 1, 2 and 3)

 

Churchill saw Hitler and his Reich as incarnating something evil and dangerous, some of the brutal sources of which may have been very old but some of which were alarmingly new. And his vision was such that he turned out to be the savior not only of England but much else besides – essentially, all of Europe. (John Lukacs, Five Days In London: May 1940.)

Adolf Hitler rose from the ashes of Germany’s sudden collapse at the end of the First World War, like a demon, to take one of the most civilised nations in modern history on a trajectory that almost completely destroyed the Judeo-Christian foundations upon which Western civilisation was built. It’s true that Europe has never recovered from the devastation Nazi Germany wreaked upon the continent. The failings of postwar Europe, with its rejection of liberal democracy by the bureaucratic institutions of the European Union, have their roots in Hitler’s “new dark age” of 1933-1945.

Remember, Hitler was the most popular leader in the thousand year history of the German people. Remember too that a nation, in fact a whole continent, cannot easily recover from the almost satanic legacy left by a generation of Nazi Germans and their collaborators, many of whom are still living. And their children and grandchildren in Europe seem to have not learned the right lessons of the 1930s and 1940s. That’s why antisemitism is rising in Europe today to levels unseen for seventy years. That’s why the European Union is openly hostile to the State  of Israel, where many of the victims of European antisemitism during the Hitler era found refuge after the war. To actively persecute the only Jewish state in the world today, only a short seventy years after the Holocaust, shows that Europe has not recovered from the sickness of which Nazi Germany was only a symptom.

Remember too that Hitler was the most disgusting, most repellent, most horrible leader of a nation state that has emerged during the modern era, the era which began with the discovery of America in 1492.

Remember that Hitler was supported by his nation wholeheartedly. The German people, voluntarily hypnotised by the dark satanic ideology of Nazism, were more than willing to wreak havoc across the European continent, to participate in the industrial genocide of seven million Jews, and countless other millions of minorities, in the most sordid act of inhumanity in the history of human civilisation. Forget the Pharaohs, the Greeks, the Romans, the Mongols and the Spanish Inquisition; the Nazi New Order represented an all time low for humankind. And this came out of a civilisation that we used to refer to as Christendom.

Remember the generation of tens of millions of people who did not live to contribute to the development of our civilisation after the Second World War because their lives were brutally stamped out by the totalitarian tyranny of the Third Reich.

Remember, too, the outstanding generation of soldiers and civilians, men and women, who fought bravely to defeat Hitler’s Germany. Let us hope that they did not live, or tragically die, in vain. We owe that generation, who gave and lost so much, to continue to carry the flame of individual freedom, democracy  and human dignity that the Nazis tried to extinguish so ruthlessly.

1940 and 1941 were very dangerous years for freedom and democracy. “Churchill understood something that not many people understood even now,” writes John Lukacs in Five Days In London: May 1940. He continues: “The greatest threat to Western civilization was not Communism. It was National Socialism. The greatest and most dynamic power in the world was not Soviet Russia. It was the Third Reich of Germany. The greatest revolutionary of the twentieth century was not Lenin or Stalin. It was Hitler.

“Hitler not only succeeded in merging nationalism and socialism into one tremendous force; he was a new kind of ruler, representing a new kind of populist nationalism. What was more, the remnants of the older order (or disorder) were not capable of withstanding him; indeed, some of the conservative representatives, in Germany and elsewhere, were inclined – for many reasons, including their fear of Communism – to accommodate themselves to him. It was thus that in 1940 he represented the wave of the future. His greatest reactionary opponent, Churchill, was like King Canute, attempting to withstand and sweep back that wave. And – yes, mirabile dictu – this King Canute succeeded: because of his resolution and – allow me to say this – because of God’s will, of which, like every human being, he was but an instrument. He was surely no saint, he was not a religious man, and he had many faults. Yet so it happened.”

Churchill was the only world leader who stood in the path of Hitler after the fall of France in June 1940. Rejecting, or not responding to, repeated “peace” offerings made by Hitler, who said he would allow the British Empire to survive if Britain would give Germany free rein in Europe, Churchill knew that the British people were fully behind the war effort against the Third Reich. “The deep-seated conservatism of the British people –  as distinct from the political and social conservatism of the Conservatives – was a great asset in 1940”, writes Lukacs. “The great majority did not know – more precisely, were hardly able to conceive – that Britain might lose the war.”

Churchill, when confronted by his son Randolph about Britain’s prospects of defeating Germany, answered, “I think I see my way through.” According to Randolph, “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.”

Churchill knew he could not defeat Nazi Germany with only the strength of the British nation and its Empire and Commonwealth. He knew that without the New World, Britain and Soviet Russia could not defeat Nazi Germany. In the end, it took the combined military and economic strength of the British Empire, the United States and Soviet Russia to defeat the greatest military machine in history, to save Europe from its own suicidal Nazi ideology of death and to preserve freedom and democracy for at least another seventy years.

And this leads us to the story of the Atlantic Charter, August 1941, which I have written about for JMA Jewish Media Agency on the 75th anniversary of the first historic meeting between Winston Churchill and US President Franklin Roosevelt.

Read on…

Extract from ‘Part 1: The New World’…

Winston Churchill, more than anyone in his time, was prescient. He knew Hitler’s “new dark age” would introduce the darkest chapter in human history. He understood the meaning of Hitlerism. He knew that Nazi Germany must be defeated. […] Churchill’s route to victory would be to drag the United States into the war.

Read part 1 in its entirety here

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Extract from ‘Part 2: For those in peril’…

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.” […] 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.

Read part 2 in its entirety here

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Extract from ‘Part 3: A special relationship’…

In the first fifteen months of his premiership, Churchill set himself a task which no other statesman of his time could have accomplished. […] First, there was the destroyers-for-bases deal; then Lend-Lease; and now, (on board the two ships Augusta and the Prince of Wales at Placentia Bay in August 1941), the announcement of a declaration of common Anglo-American principles for the conduct of the war against the Nazi tyranny.

Read part 3 in its entirety here