Planning for Peace - The Allied Conferences during World War II

Essay by Omsam June 2004

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During World War II, various conferences were held between the allied leaders to discuss the conduct of the war and to plan for the peace. The results of these meetings, for good or for ill, had far ranging affects on our world.

One of the first conferences was held even before America had joined the war. In July 1941, FDR and Churchill met for the first time in Argentia Bay off Newfoundland, to issue a joint declaration on the purposes of the war against fascism. The Atlantic Charter defined the Second World War in the same manner as Wilson's Fourteen Points had delineated the first war. (Atlantic Charter)

Several other meetings between Churchill and FDR followed in Washington, Casablanca and Quebec, to plan future global military strategy. (Conferences)

In November of 1943,Winston Churchill and Franklin Roosevelt were joined by Chinese leader Chiang Kai-shek in Cairo. They discussed plans for the Normandy Invasion and military operations in China against the Japanese.

The three leaders issued a declaration that Japan shall be stripped of all the land seized or occupied since the beginning of the First World War in 1914, and that Manchuria, Formosa, and the Pescadores, shall be restored to the Republic of China. The declaration went on to reaffirm the goal that Korea shall become free and independent. (Cairo)

Upon conclusion of the first Cairo Conference, Churchill and Roosevelt flew to Iran for the Tehran Conference with Soviet leader Joseph Stalin. Though the military discussions were at the forefront of the meeting, the Tehran Conference saw more political discussion than had occurred in any of the previous meeting between the Allies. Stalin made known his desire to retain the lands obtained in his pacts with Germany and to gain the Baltic coast of East Prussia. Churchill and Roosevelt...