After four days of secret meetings aboard warships anchored off Newfoundland, President Roosevelt and Prime Minister Churchill issued the Atlantic Charter, an eight-point statement outlining a vision for the postwar world: no territorial aggrandizement, self-determination for nations, freedom of the seas, and disarmament of aggressor states. Though the United States had not yet entered the war, the charter signaled deepening Anglo-American solidarity.
The two leaders met in strict secrecy, with Roosevelt slipping away from Washington aboard the presidential yacht before transferring at sea. Churchill arrived aboard HMS Prince of Wales, the same battleship that would be sunk by Japanese aircraft four months later. Sundays aboard the ships featured a joint religious service on the Prince of Wales deck, sailors from both nations singing hymns together, a moment of theatrical unity Churchill orchestrated deliberately for its symbolic power.
The charter had no legal force and was never signed as a formal treaty, but its principles would echo for decades. It became a founding touchstone for the United Nations Charter drafted a few years later, and its promise of self-determination was seized upon by anti-colonial movements across Asia and Africa, much to Churchill's later discomfort, since he had intended the language to apply to Nazi-occupied Europe rather than the British Empire.