Combined Chiefs of Staff, 1941-1945

The British Chiefs of Staff (COS) and the US Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) formed the Combined Chiefs of Staff committee, the supreme Anglo-American military strategic and operational authority during World War Two. The committee advised the governments of Britain and the US on matters of strategy, and also implemented the strategic decisions taken by them. In its highest capacity, the Combined Chiefs of Staff committee controlled operational strategy in the Mediterranean and European theatres, and during the Battle of the Atlantic, and held jurisdiction over grand strategic policy in all other areas where operational strategy was controlled by the COS or the JCS. The Combined Chiefs of Staff committee issued directives to its supreme commanders by acting through the chiefs of staff of the country that provided the commander. The decision to form the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS) came in Dec 1941 at the ARCADIA Conference in Washington, DC, where the British Joint Staff Mission headed by Gen (later FM) Sir John Greer Dill developed with American representatives a combined office, secretariat, and planning staff. Eventually, a number of sub-committees were constituted as the war progressed, the most important of which were the Combined Intelligence Committee and the Combined Planning Staff. With the emergence of the Combined Chiefs of Staff committee, it became necessary in the United States to form an American agency with comparable decision making structure to that of the British Chiefs of Staff (COS). This was formally inaugurated in Feb 1942 as the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS) committee, its first members being Gen George Catlett Marshall, US Army Chief of Staff , Adm Harold Raynsford Stark and Adm Ernest Joseph King, US Navy, and Lt Gen Henry H 'Hap' Arnold, US Army Air Forces.