It emerged from the meetings of the
Arcadia Conference in Washington, from December 22, 1941, to January 14, 1942. 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. The American Army Chief of Staff
George Marshall came up with the idea of a combined board, and sold it to Roosevelt and together the two sold the idea to Churchill. 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. However, Brooke was left behind in London to handle the daily details of running the British war effort, and was not consulted.
Charles de Gaulle requested
Free French representation on the committee but was declined along with the other Western Allies. As part of Marshall's plan, Roosevelt also set up a
Joint Chiefs of Staff on the American side. 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. The CCS was constituted from the British Chiefs of Staff Committee and the American
Joint Chiefs of Staff; the American unit was created in part to present a common front to the
British Chiefs of Staff. It held its first formal meeting on 9 February 1942 to coordinate U.S. military operations between War and Navy Departments. The CCS charter was approved by President Roosevelt 21 April 1942. On the British side the Chiefs of Staff only normally attended during the heads of states' conferences. Instead the British Joint Staff Mission was permanently situated in Washington, D.C. to represent British interests. The British members were a representative of the
prime minister, in his capacity as
Minister of Defence, and the Chiefs of Staff Committee, which consisted of the
First Sea Lord, the
Chief of the Imperial General Staff, and the
Chief of the Air Staff, or the Washington representative of each. The representative of the Prime Minister was
Field Marshal Sir
John Dill and after his death Field Marshal Sir
Henry Maitland Wilson. The Washington representatives of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, who normally met with the United States members in place of their principals, were the senior officers from their respective services on the British Joint Staff Mission in Washington. In the course of the war, the First Sea Lord was represented by Admiral Sir
Charles Little, Admiral Sir
Andrew Cunningham, Admiral Sir
Percy Noble, and
Admiral Sir
James Somerville; the Chief of the Imperial General Staff was represented by Lt. Gen. Sir
Colville Wemyss and Lt. Gen.
G. N. Macready; and the Chief of the Air Staff was represented by Air Marshal
D. C. S. Evill, Air Marshal Sir
William L. Welsh, and Air Marshal
Douglas Colyer. Dill, a close friend of Marshall, often took the American position and prevented polarizations that would undermine effectiveness. The Combined Chiefs of Staff organization included the Combined Secretariat and a number of committees. In the spring of 1942, Britain and the United States agreed on a worldwide division of strategic responsibility. On 24 March 1942, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff were designated as primarily responsible for the war in the Pacific, and the British Chiefs for the Middle East-Indian Ocean region, while the European-Mediterranean-Atlantic area would be a combined responsibility of both staffs. The Pacific Ocean Area command formally became operational on 8 May. The CCS usually held its meetings in Washington. The full CCS usually met only during the great wartime conferences on grand strategy, such as at
Casablanca (see
List of Allied World War II conferences). The meetings of heads of government at those conferences were designed to reach formal agreement on issues thoroughly staffed by the CCS. ==Present day==