Anglo French Supreme War Council

The Anglo French Supreme War Council, sometimes known as the Supreme War Council (SWC), was established to oversee joint military strategy at the start of the Second World War.

Meetings

Its first meeting was at Abbeville on 12 September 1940 cite book | title=The Oxford Companion to World War II |year=2001|publisher= Oxford University Press|location= Oxford ] with Britain represented by the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain, and Lord Chatfield, the French delegation being headed by their Prime Minister, Édouard Daladier, and General Maurice Gamelin.cite book |last= Prazmowska |first= Anita J |title= Britain, Poland and the Eastern Front, 1939|year=2004|publisher= Cambridge University Press |location= Cambridge |isbn=0521529387, 9780521529389| pages =239, p.184 ] The next meeting took place at Hove on 22 September 1940. At both, discussion centred on Italy and whether it would be possible to deploy military force at Salonika or Istanbul without provoking Mussolini. The French were more bellicose whereas Britain shrank from such measures. Chamberlain stated that the Allies could not prevent a German intervention into Yugoslavia. Further meetings of the SWC took place in 1939 on 17 November and 19 December.cite book |last= Hehn |first= Paul N |title= A Low Dishonest Decade: The Great Powers, Eastern Europe, and the Economic Origins of World War II, 1930-1941
year=2002|publisher= Continuum International Publishing Group |location= New York |isbn=0826417612, 9780826417619| pages =516, p.251-352]

Military participation

The Commander-in-Chief of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF), Lord Gort was not a member of the Council; yet his French counterpart, General Maurice Gamelin was. In the view of General Edward Louis Spears the failure to include the British C-in-C was a mistake: 'No government should ever lose effective touch with the commander of its army.' cite book |last= Spears |first= Sir Edward |title= Prelude to Dunkirk |year=1954|publisher= Heinemann |location= London| pages =332, p.34 ]

References