War Cabinet and Cabinet: Joint Planning Committee, later Joint Planning Staff, and...

This series consists of minutes and memoranda of the Joint Planning Committee, later Joint Planning Staff, and sub-committees:

• Joint Planning Committee, later Joint Planning Staff, minutes and memoranda (JP series: CAB 84/1-86);
• Joint Administrative Planning Staff, memoranda and papers (JAP series: CAB 84/87-91, 94-95);
• the 'Round-up' (Invasion of France) Administrative Planning Staff, minutes and memoranda (RAP series: CAB 84/92); and
• Joint Planning Sub-committee, papers (ISPS series: CAB 84/93).

The following pieces have been itemised to specifically describe the meeting items and memoranda titles: CAB 84/1-3, 7-36, 39-52. These items are as described in the integral indexes at the start of each of those documents, and it should be noted that it was the practice of the Joint Planning Staff (JPS) to destroy, in most cases, copies of draft papers, retaining the final version which appears under another number. Therefore, many of the draft papers listed as items may not exist within the document, but have been described to retain the memoranda process. Examination of the relevant minutes of the JPS meetings should, in most cases, show why particular draft papers were not proceeded with. It should also be noted that the CAB 84 item references do not appear within the original documents.

Subject and chronological.

Please be aware that the last digit of the item references do not refer to any folio or other reference on the original documents; these numbers have been generated automatically for system reasons.

For earlier files of the Joint Planning Committee see CAB 55

For later post-1947 Joint Planning Staff Reports see DEFE 6

• Cabinet, Joint Planning Staff, 1942-1945
• War Cabinet, Joint Planning Committee, 1939-1943
• War Cabinet, Joint Planning Staff, 1939-1943

from 1970 Cabinet Office

Topics

Europe and Russia

Conflict

Operations, battles and campaigns

At the outbreak of the Second World War, the Joint Planning Committee, with others of the Chiefs of Staff Committee structure within the Committee of Imperial Defence (CID), were subsumed under the authority of the War Cabinet.

The heavy demands then on the Chiefs of Staff led to further developments of the Joint Planning Organisation: see The Organisation for Joint Planning (Cmd 6351, 1942).

From September 1940, the Committee became the Joint Planning Staff and worked directly under the orders of the Minister of Defence, becoming part of the Minister of Defence's Office (formerly the CID Secretariat). It operated in three sections: strategical, executive, and future operational (or planning). This enabled the military planning work of several departments to be co- ordinated through the appointment of liaison officers.

The Joint Planning Staff, under the Directors of Plans of the three Services, were the main agents of the COS in preparing reports on problems of strategy, and were responsible for keeping the whole strategic situation under constant review. Membership comprised representatives and advisers from the service departments and ministries. After 1943, formal minutes of meetings were abandoned and the memoranda sent forward to the COS represented formal proposals.

After the Second World War, the work of the Joint Planning Staff was transferred to the new Ministry of Defence.