At the ongoing Arcadia Conference, 26 nations sign the Declaration of the United Nations.
Friendship Between Britain & USA | Warlords: Churchill vs Roosevelt - Time > .
Following the German declaration of war on America on the 11th of December 1941, Britain gained an invaluable ally. Securing a joint military command between the new partnership was central to its success.
The
Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) was the supreme
military staff for the
United States and
Britain during
World War II. It set all the major policy decisions for the two nations, subject to the approvals of British Prime Minister
Winston Churchill and U.S. President
Franklin D. Roosevelt.
The CCS emerged from the meetings of the
Arcadia Conference in Washington, from
December 22, 1941 to January 14, 1942. Shortly after Pearl Harbor, Prime Minister Churchill and his senior military staff used Arcadia as an opportunity to lay out the general strategy for the war. The American Army Chief of Staff
George Marshall came up with the idea of a combined board, and sold it to Roosevelt and together the two sold the idea to Churchill. Churchill's military aides were much less favorable, and General
Alan Brooke, the chief of the British Army, was strongly opposed. However, Brooke was left behind in London to handle the daily details of running the British war effort, and was not consulted. As part of Marshall's plan, Roosevelt also set up a Joint Chiefs of Staff on the American side. The combined board was permanently stationed in Washington, where Field Marshal
John Dill represented the British half.
The
responsibilities of the Combined Chiefs of Staff were set out as follows: Under the direction of the heads of the United Nations, the Combined Chiefs of Staff will collaborate in the formulation and execution of policies and plans concerning:
(a) the strategic conduct of the war;
(b) the broad programme of war requirements based on approved strategic policy;
(c) the direction of munition resources based on strategic needs and the availability of means of transportation; and
(d) the requirements for overseas transportation for the fighting services of the United Nations, based on approved strategic priority.
In the report of the
Arcadia Conference, it is noted, to avoid confusion, that the word 'Combined' applied to the Combined Staffs of, or combined action by two or more of the united nations, whilst the word 'Joint' signified inter- service planning by one of the 'united nations.'
The
CCS was constituted from the British
Chiefs of Staff Committee and the American
Joint Chiefs of Staff, The American unit was created in part to present a common front to the British Chiefs of Staff. It held its
first formal meeting on 9 February 1942 to coordinate U.S. military operations between War and Navy Departments.
The
CCS charter was approved by President Roosevelt
21 April 1942. The American members of the CCS were
General George C. Marshall, the
United States Army chief of staff, the Chief of Naval Operations, Admiral
Harold R. Stark (replaced early in 1942 by Admiral
Ernest J. King); and the Chief (later Commanding General) of the Army Air Forces, Lt. Gen.
Henry H. Arnold. In July 1942 a fourth member was added, the President's personal Chief of Staff, Admiral
William D. Leahy.
On the
British side the Chiefs of Staff
only normally attended during the
heads of states' conferences. Instead the
British Joint Staff Mission was permanently situated in Washington, D.C. to represent British interests. The British members were a representative of the
Prime Minister, in his capacity as
Minister of Defence, and the
Chiefs of Staff Committee, which consisted of the
First Sea Lord, the
Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and the
Chief of the Air Staff, or the Washington representative of each. The representative of the Prime Minister was
Field Marshal Sir
John Dill and after his death Field Marshal Sir
Henry Maitland Wilson. The Washington representatives of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, who normally met with the United States members in place of their principals, were the senior officers from their respective services on the British Joint Staff Mission in Washington. In the course of the war, the First Sea Lord was represented by Admiral Sir
Charles Little, Admiral Sir
Andrew Cunningham, Admiral Sir
Percy Noble, and
Admiral Sir
James Somerville; the Chief of the Imperial General Staff was represented by Lt. Gen. Sir
Colville Wemyss and Lt. Gen.
G. N. Macready; and the Chief of the Air Staff was represented by Air Marshal
D. C. S. Evill, Air Marshal Sir
William L. Welsh, and Air Marshal
Douglas Colyer. Dill, a close friend of Marshall, often took the American position and prevented a polarizations that would undermine effectiveness.
The Combined Chiefs of Staff organization included the Combined Secretariat and a
supporting organisation of combined committees and sub-committees to deal with specific subjects. Of these, the Combined Planning Staff were the body of officers appointed by the Combined Chiefs of Staff to make studies, draft plans, and perform such other work as placed on the Combined Chiefs of Staff agenda and delegated to them by the Combined Planning Staff. Officers attached to the British Joint Staff Mission provided the British element in the secretariat for these combined committees. Their authority did not extend to operations controlled directly by the Admiralty and the US Navy Department.
In the Northern hemisphere
spring of 1942, Britain and the United States agreed on a
worldwide division of strategic responsibility. On
24 March 1942, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff were designated as primarily responsible for the war in the Pacific, and the British Chiefs for the Middle East-Indian Ocean region, while the European-Mediterranean-Atlantic area would be a combined responsibility of both staffs. China was designated a separate theater commanded by its chief of state,
Chiang Kai-shek, though within the United States' sphere of responsibility. Six days later the
Joint Chiefs of Staff divided the Pacific theater into three areas: the
Pacific Ocean Areas (POA), the
South West Pacific Area (SWPA), and the
Southeast Pacific Area. The Pacific Ocean Area command formally became operational on 8 May.
The
CCS usually held its
meetings in Washington. The
full CCS usually met only during the
great wartime conferences on grand strategy, such as at
Casablanca (see
List of WW2 conferences). The British Chiefs of Staff took their place on the Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee at the
international conferences (at which Roosevelt and Churchill settled the main lines of allied strategy). For the conferences at
Tehran (December 1943),
Yalta (February 1945) and
Potsdam (July-August 1945), the British and Americans were joined by the
Russian Chiefs of Staff. The meetings of heads of government at those conferences were designed to reach formal agreement on issues thoroughly staffed by the CCS. At the
Casablanca Conference in
January 1943, General
Frank Maxwell Andrews was appointed commander of all United States forces in the
European Theater of Operations.
Although it was responsible to both the British and American governments, the
CCS controlled forces from
many different countries in
all theaters, including the Pacific, India and North Africa. The existence of the Combined Chiefs of Staff enabled forces to be effectively placed under a
commander of a different nationality without breaking the chain of responsibility to their home government, as commanders were responsible to the Combined Chiefs who respectively continued to remain responsible to their own governments. This responsibility was both
advisory (in terms of the settlement between governments of the overall strategy) and
executive (in terms of formulating and issuing directives to implement that strategy). Representatives of allied nations were not members of the CCS but accepted procedure included consultation with "Military Representatives of Associated Powers" on strategic issues. Much
cooperation continued between the British and American militaries after the war including the Combined Chiefs of Staff structure, and it was used again during the
Berlin Blockade of
1948 even as negotiations began that resulted in the
North Atlantic Treaty Organization.
