Coordination of Policy and Strategy in the First World War

Both France and Britain had developed relatively mature systems for the unification of military and political inputs to the making of strategy. The Consées Superières de la de France-Nacional, first created in 1906, gave this institutional effect by bringing ministers of foreign affairs, war, the navy and the colonies around the same table. By 1911, when Joffre was appointed Chief of the General Staff, relations between the Third Republic and its army had found greater balance. In November 1917, Clemenceau gave a unity, military, political, economic and social, to the direction of the war which ensured strategic coherence.