The Atlantic Charter

Issued August 14, 1941. Printed by United Press in the New York Times, August 15, 1941, p.1.

After taking part in World War I (1914-18) the United States adopted a policy of isolationism, vowing to remain neutral (not take sides) in conflicts between foreign countries. But in the mid-1930s, soon after German dictator Adolf Hitler's rise to power in Germany (see Winston Churchill entry in chapter one), it became clear that every nation in the world was a potential target for power-hungry dictators. (A dictator is a leader of a government in which absolute—and often unfair and oppressive—power is held by one ruler alone.) In 1935 Italian dictator Benito Mussolini took steps to broaden his political power by attacking Abyssinia (the eastern African kingdom of Ethiopia). Two years later Japan invaded central China. With the outbreak of war in Europe in 1939, the...