The Combined Chiefs of Staff was the most essential element for the conduct of successful Anglo-American coalition warfare. Both nations were in great need of such an organization, and both nations brought unique and essential elements to it. The British needed a combined command structure because, having hoped for American intervention for so long, Churchill and his military advisers wanted to be certain that the American war effort maintained the proper orientation. That is, it was essential to prevent the United States from scrapping the “ABC” decisions in order to concentrate exclusively on the war against Japan. In this regard it was necessary to counter American public opinion, which dearly desired immediate revenge for the Pearl Harbor attack. The Americans needed the Combined Chiefs of Staff organization because, with Hitler’s declaration of war against the United States, it was clear that all Allied military effort in Western Europe and the Mediterranean would center upon England. The crucial nature of the British Isles as a staging area for all Anglo-American combined operations in this area (Torch, Sicily, Italy, Overlord, and the combined bomber offensive) certainly bears this out. Also apparent was the fact that for some time to come in the war against Germany, British troop strength in the field would exceed that of the United States. At the time of the German surrender on May 7, 1945, the strength of the American army in Western Europe outnumbered British troops by a ratio of three to one. However, American troops deployed in Europe did not begin to outnumber British troops there until January 1944.1 Therefore, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff were aware that it would have been ludicrous for the Americans to even consider conducting autonomous military operations in Europe in the manner of the American Expeditionary Force of World War I.
In addition to the talents of Dill, Brooke, Pound, Portal, and Cunningham, the British brought to the Combined Chiefs of Staff an organizational structure. The British Chiefs of Staff Committee served as the model for the creation of both the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Combined Chiefs of Staff as a whole.2 The strength of the influence of the example of the British Chiefs of Staff in this regard is exemplified by the fact that during the war Marshall, King, Arnold, and Leahy were often referred to as the “United States Chiefs of Staff” rather than by their official title of “Joint Chiefs of Staff.”3 By introducing such an organizational structure, the British undoubtedly did much to improve interservice cooperation in the American military.
What the Americans brought to the Combined Chiefs of Staff organization, in addition to the strategic gifts of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was an unlimited store of resources in the form of troops, ships, aircraft, and supplies. This made possible powerful offensive operations, such as a return to the continent, which would have been impossible for Britain to undertake alone. Therefore, while the Americans sometimes found it difficult to work under a British-style command structure, the British members of the Combined Chiefs, in turn, found it difficult to discard a policy of attrition and short-term planning for the process favored by the Americans of long-term planning for large-scale offensive operations.4 Thus, in explaining the inter-Allied difficulties involved in planning Overlord, American general Omar Bradley writes that “while the British, by instinct, played cautiously and safe in their strategic planning, [the] Americans could afford to bet the works on one climactic invasion.”5
Despite their differences of opinion regarding strategic planning, the individual members of the Combined Chiefs of Staff had many things in common. They all understood the need to run the Anglo-American war effort from a central headquarters, rather than from the field. Each proved to be highly adaptable to operating within such a “board of directors” system for the direction of a coalition war effort. In addition, in a war in which (unlike World War I) the power of the offense again became capable of overcoming defensive fortifications and weapons, the members of the Combined Chiefs of Staff proved themselves quite open to understanding and planning for the utilization of modern tactics and weapons. The advocacy of Brooke and Marshall for the vigorous use of airborne divisions, as well as Portal’s efforts to get jet fighter planes into service, exemplify this common characteristic. This is significant in view of the fact that all of the principal members of the Combined Chiefs of Staff had been born before the Wright brothers’ airplane first flew at Kitty Hawk in 1903. Undoubtedly, the Combined Chiefs were aided in adopting a modern outlook in such matters by the fact that they had been young officers during World War I—a conflict that had taught them the folly and the tragedy of a static, defensive-oriented war.
CCS members showed their adaptability in other ways as well. For example, they willingly took on tasks outside of the strict definition of military science that had suddenly become necessary aspects of the role of members of a high command in modern warfare. Wartime diplomacy and production issues fall into this category. Indeed, in addition to serving as the head of the British Joint Staff Mission in Washington and as senior British representative on the Combined Chiefs of Staff, Field Marshal Dill was something of a second British ambassador to the United States. One of Dill’s unofficial responsibilities was to assist Lord Halifax in the latter’s dealings with the U.S. State Department and the president.6 The efforts of the Combined Chiefs of Staff in the field of munitions production were essential to keeping production programs in balance and to making certain that the highest quality weapons were produced.
To be sure, the Combined Chiefs of Staff organization was not without its faults. The absence of Russian representation is a complicated issue. As mentioned in chapter 4, until the time of the Cairo/Teheran Conferences in November–December 1943, the Western Allies did not feel a great need for closely coordinated planning between Anglo-American forces, on the one hand, and Russian forces, on the other. That may have been true in a literal sense. However, the difficulties encountered by General Deane upon his arrival in Moscow in October 1943 as head of the U.S. Military Mission might have been mitigated somewhat if the Western Allies had done more up to that point to coordinate their diplomatic, if not their military, activities with those of their Russian ally. For example, the Russians regarded as a severe affront the failure of the Americans and the British to allow Russian representation at the discussions that led to the surrender of Mussolini’s Italy in September 1943. Under this agreement, the Russians were not allowed any effective influence in Allied-occupied portions of Italy.7 This certainly seemed to violate the spirit of the Declaration of the United Nations, in which the Allied nations had pledged each other not to make separate peaces with any Axis nation.
Of course, any diplomatic overture made by the Western Allies to the Russians would have been hampered in its effectiveness by the failure of the Americans and the British to provide what the Russians wanted and needed most—an early cross-Channel invasion of Western Europe. The fact that that campaign was delayed until June 6, 1944, was the cause of the most damaging rift among the Allied nations during the war.
Another shortcoming of the Combined Chiefs of Staff was that they sometimes delegated either too much, or too little, responsibility to theater commanders. The invasion, by Nimitz’s Central Pacific forces, of Peleliu in the Palau Islands in October 1944 demonstrates what can happen when too much discretion is left to a field commander. This campaign required six weeks of heavy fighting in which two thousand American marines and infantry were killed. In addition to the horrendous casualties, Peleliu was controversial because by taking over unoccupied Ulithi in the western Carolines at the same time, the Americans had provided themselves with an excellent alternative base at no cost.8 In regard to the American landings on Peleliu, Nimitz’s biographer has written that “it is questionable whether the advantages gained offset the terrible cost.”9 Because Admiral King kept a close watch on operations in the Pacific, he probably should have rejected Nimitz’s plan to seize Peleliu. The converse problem of not enough responsibility being delegated to a field commander has been described in chapter 7, in regard to Admiral Pound and Convoy PQ 17.
In attempting to assess its precise role in the Allied victory in World War II, perhaps the greatest praise that can be lavished upon the Combined Chiefs of Staff organization is that all of the military campaigns planned and conducted under its auspices, with the exception of the abortive ABDA effort, ended in victory. Of these victorious campaigns, Overlord and the war in the Pacific exhibited the most dramatic successes. Italy, on the other hand, was perhaps the most disappointing for the Combined Chiefs, due to the long periods of stalemate endured by Allied forces there. In all of these campaigns, the Combined Chiefs of Staff did their utmost to support their field commanders by providing as much as they possibly could in the way of solid advance planning, adequate troops and supplies, and air and naval forces.
It is perhaps best to end where I started—by stating that never before or since in history has one military staff been responsible for the planning and ongoing supervision of as many simultaneous, large-scale military operations as was the Combined Chiefs of Staff in World War II. The successes achieved by British and American forces in the field attest to the wisdom, discipline, breadth of vision, and stamina of that military staff.