This volume was written from several groups
of records kept by the War Department before
and during World War II, interpreted with the
help of a number of other sources, principally
service histories and published memoirs. From
these sources may be established long and fairly
complete series of official transactions in
1942 dealing with strategic planning. For 1941
arid earlier years, when strategic planning
was only loosely related to the development
of national policy arid to current operations,
the sequence of official transactions was very
often broken, and much of the: evidence will
be found, if at all, in other sources than
those used by the authors.
Official Records
Documents of several kinds were used in preparing
this volume : (1) studies and other papers
drawn tip for use within the War Department;
(2) correspondence of the War Department with
the Navy Department arid the British joint
Staff Mission; (3) messages to and from Army
commanders in the field; (4) minutes of meetings
of the joint Board and the joint arid Combined
Chiefs of Staff and their subcommittees, and
papers circulated for consideration at these
meetings: and (5) various records pertaining
to the President meetings at the White House,
War Department correspondence with the President,
and the President's own correspondence on military
affairs with other heads of government). Each
of the several sets of records in which these
documents were found and consulted will be
kept intact and in due course will be transferred
to The National Archives of the United States.
These records are described in Federal Records
of World War II, Volume II, Military Agencies,
prepared by the General Services Administration,
Archives and Records Service, The National
Archives (Washington, Government Printing Office,
1951 ). ( Hereafter cited as Federal Rcds.)
The principal record groups used in preparing
this volume arc those kept by the following
offices: ( 1 ) Office of the Chief of Staff
and the divisions of the War Department General
Staff (Federal Rcds, pp. 92-151) ; (2) Headquarters,
Army Air Forces ('Federal Rcds, pp. 151-234)
; (3 ) Headquarter, Army Service Forces (Federal
Rcds, pp. 253-302); and (4) Office of The Adjutant
General (Federal Rcds, pp. 63-67) .
Most of the material for this volume was
taken from the files of the Operations Division
(and its predecessor, the War Plans Division)
of the War Department General Staff, in particular:
( 1 ) the official central correspondence file
of the War Plans Division (W PD) ; (2) the
official central correspondence file of the
Operations Division (OPD) ; (3) the W PD and
OPD Message (:enter file; (4) the plans file
of the Strategy and Policy Group, OPD (ABC);
and (5) the informal high-policy file of the
Executive Office, OPD (Exec). The Strategy
and
[397]
Policy Group records contain a virtually
complete set of papers issued by the joint
and Combined Chiefs of Staff and their subcommittees,
with OPD drafts, comments, and related papers,
and constitute one of the most important collections
of World War I I records on matters of joint
and combined strategic planning and policy.
The Executive Office files, informally arranged,
Contain documents on policy and planning that
were of particular interest to the Assistant
Chief of Staff, OPD. Many of them are to be
found now here else in. War Department files.
All these files, with the exception of the
Executive Office files (still in the custody
of the G-3 Division of the General Staff) were
located at the time of writing in the Departmental
Records Branch, Adjutant General's Office ;
DRB AGO). Formal strategic plans are Registered
Documents (Regd Docs), of the G-3 Division.
Such plans are held by G-3 unless they have
been declared obsolete, in which case they
arc located in a special collection of the
Classified Files, Adjutant General's Office.
Certain topics treated briefly in this history
were based on such extensive research that
meticulous documentation became too lengthy
for publication. The studies prepared were
organized into a special file, numbered chronologically,
and are cited by name and number, for example,
"Strategic Plans Unit Study I." Occasional
reference is also made to the OPD History Unit
File, which consists of documents collected
by- Dr. Ray S. Cline for the volume, Washington
Command Post: The Operations Division, in the
series, UNITED STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II.
Both the Strategic Plans Unit File and the
OPD History Unit File are now in the custody
of the Office of the Chief of Military History,
and will some day be retired to the Departmental
Records Branch, .AGO.
In the annotation of these sources, the type
of Communication is always indicated. Normally
four other kinds of descriptive information
are presented-originator, addressee, date,
arid subject. A file reference is not given
for all documentation that May be readily located
and positively identified without one AG letters,
messages in the Classified 'Message (:enter
series, and minutes and papers of the JCS and
CCS and their subordinate committees. AG letters
can best be located by the Adjutant General's
Office by the numbers of the letters; the classified
messages can be located by date arid classified
message number in any of Several file series;
the JCS and CCS papers and minutes can be found
by the numbers assigned to them by the JCS
and CCS; and Joint Board papers and minutes
can be located by the joint Board subject.
number and serial number. The official file
of the JCS and the CCS is under the control
of the JCS, as is the official set of joint
Board papers and minutes. (Federal Rcds, pp.
2--14. )
Other Records
The authors have compared and supplemented
their findings in the records with accounts
in other officially sponsored histories dealing
with the United States armed forces in World
War II. The Navy has not undertaken any comparable
research into strategic planning, but valuable
work has been done on Navy plans in the classified
monographs prepared in the Historical Section
of the Joint Chiefs of Staff by Capt. Tracy
B. Kittredge, USNR, and Lt. Grace Persons Hayes.
The authors have also consulted and cited the
narratives of naval operations written by the
skilled hand of Samuel Eliot 1Iorison in the
series HISTORY OF UNITED STATES NAVAL OPERATIONS
Iii WORLD WAR II. For the
[398]
operations of the Army Air Forces, the indispensable
secondary source is the series published by
the Air Force, THE ARMY AIR FORCES IN WORLD
WAR II, edited by Wesley Frank Craven and James
Lea Cate. These volumes also contain concise
summaries of the strategic planning back of
the operations described.
Finally, the authors have repeatedly used,
often in manuscript form, the work of their
colleagues writing the history of the UNITED
STATES ARMY IN WORLD WAR II, especially the
manuscript, The Logistics of Global Warfare,
by Richard M. Leighton and Robert 1V. Coakley
arid the volume, Stillwell's Mission to China,
by Charles F. Romanus and Riley Sunderland
(Washington, Government Printing Office, 19;12)
.
This volume could hardly have been written
without the help of published works drawing
on the recollections of prominent participants
and official records to which the authors did
not have access, notably:
Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War:
Their Finest Hour (Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1949) .
Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War:
The Grand Alliance (Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Company, 19:10) .
Churchill, Winston S., The Second World War:
The Hinge of Fate (Boston, Houghton Mifflin
Company, 1950) .
Sherwood, Robert E. Roosevelt and Hopkins,
An Intimate History (rev. ed., New York, Harper
& Brothers, 1950) .
Stimson, Henry L. and McGeorge Bundy, On
Active Service in Peace and War (New York,
Harper & Brothers, 1948) .
A typescript copy of the original manuscript
of the present volume, bearing the title, "Strategic
Planning for Coalition Warfare, 1939- 42,"
and containing unabridged footnotes, has been
deposited in OCMH Files where it may be consulted
by students of the subject.