War Council and successors: Minutes and Papers

This series consists of minutes and papers of those bodies directing the war from August 1914 to December 1916; councils of war, War Council, Dardanelles Committee, and the War Committee.

Chronological

Some miscellaneous papers of the War Council, Dardenelles Committee and War Committee after 1916 are in CAB 17

• Cabinet, Dardanelles Committee, 1915-1915
• Cabinet, War Committee, 1915-1916
• Cabinet, War Council, 1914-1915

From 1964 Cabinet Office

Topics

Operations, battles and campaigns

On the 5th and 6th of August 1914 meetings of ministers, chiefs of staff and other senior officers were summoned mainly to decide on sending an expedionary force to France. These meetings were described as 'councils of war'. After these two meetings no attempt appears to have been made by the Cabinet to use a subordinate body to advise on the general conduct of the war until the War Council was appointed in November 1914 to consider general matters of war policy, the secretariat of the Committee of Imperial Defence providing the secretarial needs of this new body.

After the formation of the coalition government in May 1915 the War Council was replaced by the Dardanelles Committee, created originally to consider operations in the Dardanelles and Gallipoli, but which later extended its deliberations to more general strategic and operational problems. On 3 November 1915 it was superseded by the War Committee, which continued until the formation of the War Cabinet in December 1916.