Combined Chiefs of Staff

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 was the supreme military command for the western Allies during World War II. It was a body constituted from the British Chiefs of Staff Committee and the American Joint Chiefs of Staff^{[citation needed]}.

Formed in February 1942, the CCS usually held its meetings in Washington, D.C.. Since the British military chiefs could not be expected to be continually present thousands of miles away from London, the British Joint Staff Mission was a body permanently situated in Washington, D.C. to represent British interests. The Joint Staff Mission was a tri-service organization and included Field Marshal Sir John Dill (who was replaced on his death by Field Marshal Sir Henry Maitland Wilson) and Admiral Sir James Somerville amongst its members during the war.

The full CCS usually met only during the great wartime conferences on grand strategy, such as at Casablanca; 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.

The key members of the CCS were General George C. Marshall, the United States Army chief of staff, and General Sir Alan Brooke (later Viscount Alanbrooke), Chief of the Imperial General Staff.

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.

External links

• Conference Proceedings of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, 1941-1945, Dwight D. Eisenhower Presidential Library