War Cabinet

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A War Cabinet is a committee formed by a government in time of war. It is usually a subset of the full executive cabinet of ministers. It is also quite common for a War Cabinet to have senior military officers and opposition politicians as members.

1 United Kingdom
- 1.1 First World War
- 1.2 Second World War
2 United States

[edit] United Kingdom

[edit] First World War

During the First World War, lengthy Cabinet discussions came to be seen as a source of vacillation in Britain's war effort. In December 1916 it was proposed that the Prime Minister Herbert Asquith should delegate decision-making to a small, three-man committee chaired by the Secretary of State for War David Lloyd George. Asquith initially agreed (provided he retained the right to chair the committee if he chose) before changing his mind after being infuriated by an article in "The Times" which portrayed the proposed change as a defeat for him. The political crisis grew from this point until Asquith was forced to resign as Prime Minister; he was succeeded by David Lloyd George who therefore formed a small War Cabinet. Members of the War Cabinet were:

David Lloyd George
Lord Curzon of Kedleston (Lord President of the Council)
Andrew Bonar Law (Chancellor of the Exchequer)

Other members:

Arthur Henderson (December 1916 - August 1917)
Lord Milner (December 1916 - April 1918)
Jan Smuts (June 1917 - January 1919)
George Barnes (May 1917 - January 1919)
Sir Austen Chamberlain (April 1918 - October 1919)
Sir Eric Geddes (January 1919 - October 1919)

Unlike a normal peacetime Cabinet, few of these men had departmental responsibilities. The Foreign Secretary, Arthur Balfour was never a member of the War Cabinet, nor were the Secretary of State for War (Lord Derby) nor the First Lord of the Admiralty Edward Carson, nor the Minister of Munitions Winston Churchill (from mid 1917) although Lord Milner became Secretary of State for War in 1918.

From the northern spring of 1917, the British war cabinet was superseded by the Imperial War Cabinet, which had representation from the Dominions. Its members were:

Lloyd George
Sir Robert Borden, Prime Minister of Canada
Louis Botha, Prime Minister of South Africa
Billy Hughes, Prime Minister of Australia
William Massey, Prime Minister of New Zealand
Jan Smuts
the British Secretary of State for India and other senior ministers from Britain and the dominions.

[edit] Second World War

On 3 September 1939, Neville Chamberlain announced his War Cabinet.

Prime Minister: N. Chamberlain (Cons)
Lord Privy Seal: Sir Samuel Hoare (Cons)
Chancellor of the Exchequer: Sir John Simon (Nat. Liberal)
Foreign Secretary: Viscount Halifax (Cons)
Secretary of State for War: L. Hore-Belisha (Nat. Liberal)
Secretary of State for Air: Sir Kingsley Wood (Cons)
First Lord of the Admiralty: W. S Churchill (Cons)
Minister for the Co-Ordination of Defence: Lord Chatfield (Cons)
Minister without Portfolio: Lord Hankey (Liberal)

Dominated largely by Conservative ministers who served under Chamberlain's National Government between 1937 and 1939, the additions of Lord Hankey (Liberal and a former Cabinet Secretary from the First World War) and Winston Churchill (strong anti-appeaser) seemed to give the Cabinet more balance. Unlike Lloyd George's War Cabinet, the members of this one were also heads of Government Departments.

In January of 1940, after disagreements with the Chiefs of Staff, Hore-Belisha resigned from the National Government, refusing a new position as Minister of Information. He was succeeded by Oliver Stanley.

When he became Prime Minister during the Second World War, Winston Churchill formed a War Cabinet, initially consisting of the following: