COSSAC - Stephen C. Kepher

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almost every aspect of planning and fighting against the Germans and the Japanese, most obviously in the realm of strategy. Tough decisions had to be made between competing strategies for winning the war: what allocation of resources, for what purpose, against which enemy, how, when, where, and by whom.

      Consequently, the British and Americans established mechanisms to facilitate planning and communication, starting with the Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS). Composed of the service heads of the U.S. and UK armed forces, along with supporting staffs, the CCS evolved into an effective means of waging the war against the Axis. Britain had broad experience of coalition warfare—both good and bad—during the 150 years or so leading up to the alliance with the United States and Soviet Union: against Napoleon, in the Crimea, and in World War I. The United States, by comparison, had little experience, except as an Associated Power for the last year of World War I. In the beginning, the difference was obvious.

      Meetings between British and American military planners began before U.S. entry into the war, starting in January 1941 in Washington, D.C. At these meetings, planners agreed to an exchange of military missions (of both naval and army officers), and in May 1941 the U.S. Army Special Observer Group was formed in London, joining Adm. Robert Lee Ghormley, USN, who had been the special naval observer since the fall of 1940. In Washington, there was the British Joint Service Mission, which represented the British Chiefs of Staff. “With the establishment of these ‘nucleus missions’ the exchange of views between the British and American staffs became continuous, and the problems of coalition warfare came to be a familiar part of the work of American planners.”2

      After U.S. entry into the war, nine interallied conferences were held between December 1941 and July 1945, to debate and reach agreement on what the strategy of the Western Allies should be. It was at these conferences that the discussions over priorities and allocation of resources played out. It is rare for allies to devote so much time to the coordination of effort over so long a period. Given that Great Britain and the United States were essentially equals with different strategic priorities, it isn’t surprising that there were serious differences of opinion over complex issues that took time to resolve while circumstances and context kept changing.

      The change in circumstances became clear over the course of 1943, as was reflected in the narrative of the five conferences held during that year. The story of COSSAC is intertwined with that narrative. How the Allies got there and what happened next is where we begin.

      — 1 —

      “A COMMON BOND OF DANGER”

      Just weeks after the American entry into World War II, British and American political and military leaders met for the first time as coalition partners, in Washington, D.C. The meetings set out in broad terms how the British, who wrote most of the meeting documents, thought the war should be fought. At this meeting, code-named ARCADIA (22 December 1941 to 14 January 1942), a memorandum of understanding was agreed to that became, to a large degree, one of the sources of ongoing debate and mistrust between the Allies. This was because circumstances overtook many of the assumptions on which the understanding was based and because there was as yet only the embryo of a U.S. strategic planning structure and no American strategic plan.1

      The memo, titled “W.W.-1,” affirmed the agreements reached the year before at the so-called ABC (American-British conversations) meetings that Germany was “the prime enemy and her defeat is the key to our victory…. In our considered opinion, therefore, it should be a cardinal principle of American-British strategy that only the minimum of force necessary for the safeguarding of vital interests in other theatres should be diverted from operations against Germany.”2

      “W.W.-1” went on to list the essential strategic concepts, including “closing and tightening the ring around Germany” and “wearing down and undermining German resistance by air bombardment, blockade, subversive activities and propaganda.”3 This ring would be strengthened by “sustaining the Russian front, by arming and supporting Turkey, by increasing our strength in the Middle East, and by gaining possession of the whole North African coast.”4

      The evaluation of the opportunities for offensive actions was straightforward: “It does not seem likely that in 1942 any large-scale land offensive against Germany except on the Russian front will be possible…. In 1943 the way may be clear for a return to the Continent, via the Scandinavian Peninsula, across the Mediterranean, from Turkey into the Balkans, or by simultaneous landings in several of the occupied countries of Northwestern Europe.”5 The only option not mentioned was one massive cross-Channel assault.

      The memorandum was, by necessity, sweepingly general and vague. How, when, and by what path the fight was to be taken to Germany had yet to be determined. In short, while the concept of offensive action existed at ARCADIA, the ways and means and any particular strategy did not. Identifying Germany as the “prime enemy” was simply the lowest common denominator.

      While there was no disagreement that Allied resources needed to be concentrated against Germany, just what constituted “the minimum of force necessary” for the Pacific and the strategic value of increasing Allied strength in the Mediterranean quickly became the subjects of serious debate that remained unresolved until the end of 1943. Indeed, for the American military and the American public, the crisis of early 1942 was in the Pacific.

      Two long-lasting agreements did come out of the ARCADIA conference; first, agreement with the proposal by the U.S. Army’s chief of staff, Gen. George Marshall, to unify command at the strategic level—each theater of operations would have one supreme commander, either British or American, who would direct all forces of all nations in that theater. While occasionally honored in the breach, notably for OVERLORD, this was at least a concept that was embraced; and, second, agreement to create the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff and the Anglo-American Combined Chiefs of Staff (CCS), bringing together the military and naval service heads from both countries. Formed to direct the theater commanders, the chiefs, reporting directly to the president and prime minister, were responsible for reaching agreement on the general strategic direction of the war and on the actions necessary to achieve the agreed strategic goals. The nine high-level interallied conferences held between 1943 and 1945 were attempts to achieve those agreements.6 Beyond that, Americans and British were in constant contact with each other, often through the offices of the British Joint Service Mission in Washington, D.C., where the American Joint Chiefs could talk to their counterparts “in real time.” The Joint Staff Mission represented the British Chiefs of Staff (COS) and was headed by Field Marshal John Dill, former chief of the Imperial General Staff. He quickly gained the trust and respect of the Americans. His great ability to find common ground between the Americans and British at times of profound disagreement has been overlooked by some historians. Of equal importance were the various joint and combined staffs that would be formed to support and inform the decisions reached by the CCS.

      Just over six weeks after the end of the ARCADIA conference, at the end of February 1942, the new director of the War Plans Division of the U.S. Army, Brig. Gen. Dwight Eisenhower, submitted a memo to General Marshall that outlined what would become a fundamentally different central idea in the American approach to strategy. Rejecting the British peripheral approach spelled out at ARCADIA, Eisenhower agreed that keeping Russia in the war was one of three key objectives for the Allies, but the best way to do that was for the United States to develop, “in conjunction with the British, a definite plan for operations in Northwest Europe. It should be sufficiently extensive in scale as to engage from the middle of May [1942] onward, an increasing portion of the German Air Force, and by late summer an increasing amount of his ground forces.”7

      By the end of March 1942, Eisenhower and what was now the Operations Division of the Army’s Chief of Staff office had prepared an outline of “Operations in Western Europe” that Marshall would present to the British chiefs in April. There were three components: BOLERO, the concentration of troops and supplies in Britain in preparation for an invasion; ROUNDUP, the invasion, anticipated for the spring of 1943; and SLEDGEHAMMER, conceived as an emergency operation for 1942, to be conducted if the situation in Russia became desperate, with the hope that it would temporarily divert some German forces from the East, even at

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