The First Washington Conference also known as the Arcadia Conference (ARCADIA was the code name used for the conference), was held in Washington, D.C. from December 22, 1941 to January 14, 1942. It was the first strategic meeting between the heads of government of the United Kingdom and the United States after the United States entered World War II. The delegations were headed by the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill, and the American President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
Although Roosevelt was under some domestic pressure to concentrate the United States war effort on Japan because of the attack on Pearl Harbor a couple of weeks earlier on December 7, the United States government agreed that to win the war, the prime objective was the defeat of Nazi Germany (Europe first strategy). Adolf Hitler's declaration of war on the United States on December 11, 1941,[1] made this decision more politically acceptable to opinion in the United States than it would otherwise have been.
It was also agreed at the conference to combine military resources under one command in the European Theater of Operations (ETO).
See also
- Washington Conference
- List of World War II conferences
- U.S.-British Staff Conference (ABC-1) - the staff meeting that laid the groundwork for this political meeting.
References
Further reading
- Maurice Matloff and Edwin M. Snell. Strategic Planning for Coalition Warfare 1941-1942. Washington, Office of the Chief of Military History, Dept. of the Army, 1953-59. The ARCADIA Conference is covered in Chapter V and Chapter VI
- Conferences of the Allied Grand Strategy from University of San Diego Department of History World War II Timeline
- This Day in History January 1 - The History Channel
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