On August 14, 1941, while the world was still engaged in war, American President F. D. Roosevelt met with the British Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill aboard a warship near the coasts of the US. Together, they decided that after this war had ended, everything possible must be done in order to ensure peace in the world. They agreed that the US and great Britain were not fighting this war in order to conquer new lands, but only to defend the citizens of various countries of the world who had been threatened by the Nazis (the followers of Hitler). They also agreed that all people in the world had a right to choose their own governments. Roosevelt and Churchill signed a document that contained these principles and this was called the Atlantic Charter. In the following few years, many more nations of the world signed this charter and at last an international organization called the United Nations came into being on October 10, 1945. Its headquarters were situated in New York. Two years later, Geneva was declared the European centre of the UN and some UN agencies have their headquarters there.