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MILITARY PLANNING AND FOREIGN AFFAIRS 325
and the JCS could refer those acceptable
from a military point of view back to the
State Department. The State Department
then, if it wished, could give its final approval
to such papers and send them to
Ambassador Winant as a basis for negotiations
in the European Advisory Commission.
43
This first attempt to organize interdepartmental
staff work on a basis that would
include the JCS committees and the State
Department was clumsy and slow. At the
end of April 1945, after the JPWC had
been at work for over ten months, the Army
planner criticized the slowness of the
JPWC. He observed that, except for OPD's
representative, JPWC members tended to
sit in an "ivory tower" and produce "little
themselves and that very slowly." The
papers they did produce, he went on to say,
were "often so discoordinated that we have
to work them over again here." 44 The task
of the Working Security Committee in getting
co-ordinated military opinion was impeded
not only by the slowness of the JPWC
but also by the very complexity of the interlocked
Army and JCS staff system. Thus
Working Security Committee papers on
civil affairs did not get to the JPWC but
43 For this simplified statement of the way in
which the Washington staff functioned, or at least
was supposed to function, see notes, unsigned, 24
Oct 44, no sub, on a talk given by General Strong
to the Policy Section of S&P, with CCS Memo for
Info 251 in ABC 381 UN (25 Jan 42), 3-A.
44 Informal memo, Brig Gen G. A. Lincoln for
Maj Gen Hull, 28 Apr 45, sub: Asgmt of an Add
Off for Dy With JPWC, with JCS 786/7 in ABC
334.8 Jt Post-War Committee (7 Jun 44). He
remarked on the volume of JPWC work: "We
have in the Planners and the Logistics Committee
demonstration that joint planning can be made to
work providing it is tied to the Department ....
S&P probably writes one Planners' paper a day on
the average. On the other hand the JPWC, with
the same number of members as the JWPC, produces
only ten papers during a month."
were cleared by the Civil Affairs Division,
which acted for the War Department and
in a joint Army-Navy capacity. Even then,
the chief of OPD's S&P Group and his
Policy Section might feel obliged to slow
the process down at the last moment when
reviewing papers that had reached the JCS
level. Since OPD had a liaison officer on
duty with the Civil Affairs Division, as well
as a member on both the JPWC and the
Working Security Committee, and since it
assumed responsibility for getting co-ordinated
action on JPWC and Civil Affairs
Division matters as well as other policy issues,
the Working Security Committee
system did work as far as the Army was
concerned, but at best it did not work very
well.
In the autumn of 1944, while criticisms
of Washington politico-military planning
multiplied, it became increasingly urgent
to start getting policy papers cleared in
order that Ambassador Winant and his
colleagues could get ahead with their negotiations
in the European Advisory Commission.
45 With military operations on the
Continent moving rapidly, the collapse or
surrender of Germany before the end of
the year was a distinct possibility. Yet high
State Department officials, being themselves
uncertain about American foreign policy
as applied to the surrender and occupation
of Germany, could give the Working Security
Committee very little to go on. At
the same time, after more than two years
without systematic co-ordination of foreign
policy with military planning, the State Department
was very hesitant about asking for
JCS views on matters obviously having
military significance, while the JCS, espe-
45
For criticisms from Ambassador Winant, see
summary of msg (COMEA 108), Ambassador
Winant to State Dept, 7 Oct 44, with CCS Memo
for Info 244 in ABC 381 UN (23 Jan 42), 3-A.