| Summary: | The minutes of the Combined Chiefs' meeting at the major conferences touch on virtually every policy and strategy issue of World War II, from initial troop deployments to counter Axis aggression, through the debates about the location and timing of the principal Anglo-American offensives, to the settlement of post-war occupation boundaries. Besides being an invaluable primary source on the early years of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and on the planning and conduct of World War II, these documents also offer insights for today on the problems of managing a global coalition war. Originally highly classified documents, the minutes were declassified by JCS Regrading Memo 52-73 on October 3, 1973. The Joint History Office is publishing these minutes on CD-Rom to make them readily available to present-day military planners, faculty and students at the joint and service schools, historians, and the general public. ARCADIA (Washington. DC, 24 December 1941-14 January 1942). Roosevelt, Churchill, and the U.S. and British Chiefs of Staff conducted their first post-Pearl Harbor strategy conference. The political leaders drafted and signed the Declaration of the United Nations. The military chiefs discussed an invasion of North Africa, completed arrangements for American forces to relieve British troops in Iceland and Northern Ireland, made plans for American reinforcement of the South Pacific, and set up a combined allied command for Southeast Asia.
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