The principal participants at the Trident Conference—which was held in Washington, DC, from May 12 to 25, 1943—were President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British prime minister Winston S. Churchill, and the Combined Chiefs of Staff. British Field Marshal Archibald P. Wavell; Major General Claire L. Chennault, USA; and Lieutenant General Joseph W. Stilwell, USA, from the China-Burma-India Theater were also present for the discussions on this region, marking the first time when Allied commanders from Asia attended a major wartime conference.
Building on the decision at the Casablanca Conference to knock Italy out of the war first, the planning for the Italian campaign, which would begin with the amphibious invasion of Sicily (Operation Husky), was a major focus at the Trident Conference. The Allied leaders also deliberated on how and when to stage the cross-Channel invasion of France to bring the war with Germany to an end. Other notable topics of discussion at Trident included increasing air attacks on Axis targets—with an emphasis on bombing the oil fields in Ploiesti, Romania—and recapturing Burma from Japanese forces and reopening the supply lines to China.
Trident was one in a series of high-level conferences held by the US and British leaders in Washington, DC; Casablanca; Quebec; Cairo; Tehran; Malta; Yalta; and Potsdam to formulate the Allied grand strategy. At the Tehran, Yalta, and Potsdam conferences, the Soviet leader Joseph Stalin was also in attendance and played an important role.
The
World War II Inter-Allied Conferences is a new digital original eBook series produced by the Office of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff available for free download. This resource is also available in Mobi format ISBN: 9780160938795 and PDF format ISBN: 9780160938801 and are also available for free download
Other resources in the WWII Inter-Allied Conferences series include the following titles:
Arcadia Conference (Washington, DC), December 24, 1941–January 14, 1942: ISBN 9780160938870 (Mobi); ISBN 9780160938863 (ePub); ISBN 9780160938887 (PDF)
Post-Arcadia Conference (Washington, DC), January 23–May 19, 1942: ISBN 9780160938900 (Mobi);
ISBN 9780160938894 (ePub); ISBN 9780160938917 (PDF)
Casablanca Conference (Morocco), January 14–24, 1943: ISBN 9780160938931 (Mobi);
ISBN 9780160938924 (ePub); ISBN 9780160938948 (PDF)
Quadrant Conference (Quebec City, Canada), August 14–24, 1943: ISBN 9780160938825 (Mobi);
ISBN 9780160938818 (ePub); ISBN 9780160938832 (PDF)
Sextant Conference (Cairo, Egypt), Eureka Conference (Tehran, Iran), and the Second Cairo Conference (Egypt), November 22–December 7, 1943: ISBN 9780160938856 (Mobi); ISBN 9780160938849 (ePub);
ISBN 9780160939266 (PDF)
Octagon Conference (Quebec City, Canada), September 12–16, 1944: ISBN 9780160939259 (Mobi);
ISBN 9780160939273 (ePub); ISBN 9780160939280 (PDF)
Argonaut Conference (Malta and Yalta, Soviet Union), January 30–February 11, 1945:
ISBN 9780160939303 (Mobi); ISBN 9780160939297 (ePub); ISBN 9780160939242 (PDF)
Terminal Conference (Potsdam, Germany), July 17–August 2, 1945:
ISBN 9780160939235 (Mobi); ISBN 9780160939310 (ePub); ISBN 9780160939327 (PDF)
