Combined Chiefs of Staff

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.

[1] 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.

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.

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.

[4] 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.

However, support for closer bilateral military integration rose due to the beginning of the Cold War, including the exposure of Soviet espionage in the United States.

[3] 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.