Four Freedoms

1

Four freedoms - January 6, 1941

freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from want, and freedom from fear of armed aggression.

1. The first is freedom of speech and expression -- everywhere in the world.

2. The second is freedom of every person to worship God in his own way -- everywhere in the world.

3. The third is freedom from want -- which, translated into world terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants -- everywhere in the world.

4. The fourth is freedom from fear -- which, translated into world terms, means a world-wide reduction of armaments to such a point and in such a thorough fashion that no nation will be in a position to commit an act of physical aggression against any neighbor-- anywhere in the world.

his Four Freedoms speech did promise America's "full support" for the Allied cause. On August 14, 1941, President Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill confirmed the Four Freedoms as joint war aims in the Atlantic Charter.

Atlantic Charter (declaration of U.S. into the war and to fight Germany first, and Japan second)

1. At the Casablanca Conference, Franklin Roosevelt and Winston Churchill met and agreed on the term of "unconditional surrender."

At the Tehran Conference, the Big Three (Wilson, Churchill, and Josef Stalin, leader of Russia) met and agreed that the Soviets and Allies would launch simultaneous attacks

At the Potsdam Conference, the Allies issued an ultimatum: surrender or be destroyed

II. Yalta: Bargain or Betrayal?

1. A final conference of the Big Three had taken place at Yalta in February 1945, where Soviet leader Joseph Stalin pledged that Poland should have a representative government with free elections, as would Bulgaria and Romania, but he broke those promises.

2. At Yalta, the Soviet Union had agreed to attack Japan three months after the fall of Germany, but by the time the Soviets entered the Pacific war, the U.S. was about to win anyway, and now, it seemed that the USSR had entered to the sake of taking some spoils.