Abstract
On 13 December 1939, three months after the outbreak of war with Germany, the British Minister for Co-ordination of Defence, Admiral of the Fleet Lord Chatfield, addressed the National Defence Public Interest Committee. He was able to reassure his listeners:
Further, we have the closest cooperation with our great Ally. Here again in the months before the war was organised the closest and most complete understanding. Not only had we at the outbreak of war a Supreme War Council, but Anglo-French staffs in all sections are completely organised and sit together daily to study the problems of war. It is true to say that never have allies started fighting with such a complete mechanism, such complete plans and such identity of spirit.1
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Notes
For the First World War see W. J. Philpott, Anglo-French Relations and Strategy on the Western Front 1914–1918 (London: Macmillan — now Palgrave, 1996); W. J. Philpott, ‘Squaring the Circle: the Higher Coordination of the Entente in the Winter of 1915–16’, English Historical Review (forthcoming).
For the struggles over a continental military commitment between the wars see B. J. Bond, British Military Policy between the Two World Wars (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980).
F. Bédarida, La stratégie secrète de la drôle de guerre: la Conseil Suprême Interallié septembre1939–avril 1940 (Paris: Presses de la Fondation Nationale des Sciences Politiques, 1979), p. 21.
Spears had been active in Anglo-French liaison in the First World War and was to play a similar role in the Second. See M. Egremont, Under Two Flags: the Life of Major-General Sir Edward Spears (London: Weidenfeld, 1997).
Lord Ismay, The Memoirs of Lord Ismay (London: Heinemann, 1960), p. 87. See also ‘Supreme Control in War’, unattributed memo, 3 July 1939, which was clearly the precursor of the memo of the same title submitted to the CID (see note 15), SHAT, 2N229/3.
R. Macleod and D. Kelly (eds), The Ironside Diaries, 1937–40 (London: Constable, 1962), pp. 237–8.
E. L. Spears, Prelude to Victory (London: Jonathan Cape, 1939), p. 81.
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Philpott, W. (2002). The Supreme War Council and the Allied War Effort, 1939–1940. In: Chassaigne, P., Dockrill, M. (eds) Anglo-French Relations 1898–1998. Studies in Military and Strategic History. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781403907127_10
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