thumb|220px|right|Combined Chiefs of Staff in Quebec – August 23, 1943. Seated around the table from left foreground: Vice Adm. Lord [[Louis Mountbatten, Sir Dudley Pound, Sir Alan Brooke, Sir Charles Portal, Sir John Dill, Lt. Gen. Sir Hastings L. Ismay, Brigadier Harold Redman, Comdr. R.D. Coleridge, Brig. Gen. John R. Deane, General Henry Arnold, General George Marshall, Admiral William D. Leahy, Admiral Ernest King, and Capt. F.B. Royal.]]

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.

History

It 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 Armed Forces, was strongly opposed. Brooke believed that if the Western Allies were placed under international unified commands the United States would become dominant, and also feared that the situation of the CCS in Washington, D.C. would leave Britain unable to initiate military policy. However, Brooke was left behind in London to handle the daily details of running the British war effort, and was not consulted. Charles de Gaulle requested Free French representation on the committee but was declined along with the other Western Allies.

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 at the United States Public Health Service Building in Washington, where Field Marshal John Dill represented the British half. 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.

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 polarizations that would undermine effectiveness.

The Combined Chiefs of Staff organization included the Combined Secretariat and a number of committees.

In the 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. 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 Allied World War II conferences). The meetings of heads of government at those conferences were designed to reach formal agreement on issues thoroughly staffed by the CCS.

Present day

Both the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and the UK's Chiefs of Staff Committee met as a "Combined Chiefs of Staff Committee" around March 2013, the first time since their World War II meetings. This was held in Washington DC. Subsequent meetings were held in London 2014 and in the National Defense University, May 2015.

See also

  • United Kingdom-United States relations in World War II

References

Further reading

  • Adams, Henry H. Witness to Power: The Life of Fleet Admiral William D. Leahy (1985)
  • Bercuson, David, and Holger Herwig. One Christmas in Washington: Roosevelt and Churchill Forge the Grand Alliance (2005)
  • Butler, J.R.M. et al. Grand Strategy. Volume II. September 1939 – June 1941 (London: HMSO, 1976), official British history
  • Cline, Ray S. Washington Command Post: The Operations Division Vol. 4. Office of the Chief of Military History, Department of the Army, 1951.
  • Danchev, Alex. Being Friends: The Combined Chiefs of Staff and the Making of Allied Strategy in the Second World War (1992)
  • Davis, Vernon E. The History of the Joint Chiefs of Staff in World War II: Organizational Development (Historical Section, Joint Chiefs of Staff, 1953)
  • Freuding, Christian. "Organising for War: Strategic Culture and the Organisation of High Command in Britain and Germany, 1850–1945: A Comparative Perspective." Defence Studies (2010) 10#3 pp: 431–460.
  • Jackson, William Godfrey Fothergill. The chiefs: the story of the United Kingdom chiefs of staff (Potomac Books Inc, 1992), 504pp; includes postwar
  • Jordan, Jonathan W., American Warlords: How Roosevelt's High Command Led America to Victory in World War II (NAL/Caliber 2015).
  • Leahy, William D. I Was There: the Personal Story of the Chief of Staff to Presidents Roosevelt and Truman, based on his notes and diaries made at the time (Whittlesey House, 1950)
  • Matloff, Maurice and Edwin M. Snell. Strategic planning for coalition warfare, 1941–1942 (United States Army in World War II: The War Department; "Green Books"" series)) (1953) Kindle edition
  • Matloff, Maurice. Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare 1943–1945 (US Army Green Book) (1951) Kindle edition
  • Rice, Anthony J. "Command and control: the essence of coalition warfare." Parameters (1997) v 27 pp: 152–167.
  • Rigby, David. Allied Master Strategists: The Combined Chiefs of Staff in World War II (2012) excerpt and text search; online review
  • Roberts, Andrew. Masters and Commanders: How Four Titans Won the War in the West, 1941–1945 (2009), covers the interactions of Roosevelt, Churchill, Marshall, and Brooke.
  • Rosen, S. McKee. The combined boards of the Second World War: An experiment in international administration (Columbia University Press, 1951)
  • United States Army in World War II – The War Department – Washington Command Post: The Operations Division; Chapter VI. Organizing The High Command For World War II "Development of the Joint and Combined Chiefs of Staff System"
  • Conference Proceedings of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, 1941–1945, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library