CONDUCT OF THE WAR

Wairarapa Times-Age, 22 April 1942, Page 4

CONDUCT OF THE WAR

STAFF ORGANISATION IN BRITAIN INFORMATION GIVEN IN WHITE PAPER PRESENTED TO PARLIAMENT BY MR. CHURCHILL. JOINT BODY IN EXISTENCE FOR YEARS. (British Official Wireless.) (Received This Day, 1.15 p.m.) RUGBY, April 21. A White Paper on organisation for joint planning, presented by the Prime Minister (Mr Churchill) to Parliament, was issued today. The paper states that ultimate respensibility for the conduct of the war rests with the War Cabinet, the Chiefs of Staff being their professional advisers. The Prime Minister and Minister of Defence superintends, on behalf of the War Cabinet, the work of the Chiefs of Staff committee.

He is assisted by ,the Defence Committee, which comprises, besides the Prime Minister as chairman, Messrs Attlee, Eden and Lyttelton, the three Service Ministers, the Chiefs of Staff and the Chief of Combined Operations. Other Ministers are invited to attend as necessary. The Joint Staff, advocated from time to time in Parliament and in the Press, has in fact existed for many years. It has been progressively reorganised and expanded in light of war experience. It consists of specially elected officers of the three Services, who live and work together in the same offices. Thus they learn to think and act, not in terms of three separate units, but animated by the same spirit and the same conception of a single task. At their service, for information and advice, are the three Departmental Staffs of the Navy, Army and Air Force. The Joint Planning Staff is under the directors of plans of the Admiralty. War Office and Air Ministry. These divide their time between their own Ministries and the joint planning centres.

WORK AS A TEAM. Each planning section consists of specially-selected officers, who work as a team in every sense of the word. They share not only the same task, but the same office. They not only mess together but sleep in the same building. They are available for consultation at any hour of the day and night. The planning sections’ duties are as follow: —The strategical planning section, under the Chiefs of Staff and Directors of Plans, keeps the general situation under constant review and prepares appreciations from time to time, with recommendations as to action. We should adopt an executive planning section, charged with concerting ways and means of putting into effect the plans which have been approved. The future operational planning section concentrates on the preparation of future plans, even though these may not be immediately within the range of practical politics. Thus it is not rigidly bound by the limitations of the forces, transport and other resources immediately available. The Joint Planning Stftff of course is primarily concerned with military plans, but in total war other considerations—political, economic, etc., have to be taken into account. Consequently the Foreign Office has permanent representatives on the Joint Planning Staff, while the political Warfare Executive and the Ministries of War, Transport, Economic Warfare and Home Security have liaison officers who are called into consultation.

IMPORTANT SUB-COMMITTEE. The Joint Intelligence Sub-Commit-tee consists of the Directors of Intelligence of the three Service Departments and the Deputy Director-Gen-eral of the Ministry of Economic Warfare. These work part time in their own Ministries and part time as a team. They have under them the joint staffs of the three Services, the Foreign Office and the Ministry of Economic Warfare. These work on exactly the same lines as the sections of the Joint Planning Steffi. Broadly speaking, it is the responsibility of the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee to collate and assess all information about the enemy and in particular to prepare appreciations of the most likely course of enemy action from time to time. The Joint Planning Staff and the Joint Intelligence Sub-Committee work hand in hand and both are regularly summoned to discuss problems with the Chiefs of Staff.

No attempt is made in the White Paper to cover many other fields of activity, in which all three Services and civil Departments are jointly concerned. Arrangements for co-ordinat-ing these are based on the same broad principles. In order to ensure that operational planning and production planning are even more closely combined than hitherto, there has recently been created a Joint War Production Staff. This body is under the chairmanship of the Minister of Production and comprises a chief adviser to the Minister of Production on programme and planning, chief technical officers of the three supply Departments and representatives of the Service Chiefs of Staffs. Representatives of the Ministers of Labour, War and Transport also attend as necessary. ADJUSTMENT TO WAR. Before the war, the Secretariat of the Committee of Imperial Defence consisted of selected officers of the three fighting Services and the Civil Service. They were responsible for arranging the business of drafting reports and maintaining the records of the Committee of Imperial Defence and its many sub-committees. Working in close touch with them, and in the same building, was the Secretariat of Cabinet. At the outbreak of war, the two Secretariats were immediately merged, to form the Secretariat of the War Cabinet and of its committees, military and civil. The military members of this secretariat constitute the staff of the office of the Minister of Defence, and arrange the business, draft the reports and maintain the records of the military committees of the War Cabinet, from the Defence Committee downwards. They are thus in a position to keep the Minister of Defence informed on the progress of work and to take his instructions on any matters on which he may wish to give direction. A note states that the members of the Chiefs of Staff Committee are General Sir Alan Brook (chairman), Admiral of the Fleet Sir Dudley Pound, Air Chief Marshal Sir Hastings Ismay, 1 and Vice-Admiral Lord Louis Mount-

batten. In order to ease the burden of the dual task of the Chiefs of Staff of advising the Government on defence policy as a whole and directing the work of their own services, each has a vice-chief as his alter ego. The ViceChiefs of Staff hold regular meetings/ at which they deal with matters delegated to them. The members are ViceAdmiral Moore, Lieutenant-General Nye and Air Chief Marshal Sir Wilfred Freeman.