Catalogue description War Cabinet: Central Office for North American Supplies: Minutes and Papers

Original numerical sequence of creating body has been followed

The Central Office for North American Supplies was established in 1940. Prior to this, a special section of the War Cabinet Secretariat (the Anglo-French Liaison Section) had been set-up in 1939, and this later provided the British secretariat for the Allied Military Committees and the Anglo-French Executives and Co-ordinating Committee, the latter being dissolved after the fall of France in 1940. The secretariat of these committees had not only acted as a link between the British and French, but also between the various British government departments in purchasing supplies from North America; as this work needed to be continued, a Central Office for North American Supplies was established as part of the War Cabinet Secretariat. It was staffed by the British members of the former Anglo-French Co-ordinating Committee, and the Office was directed by an official inter-departmental committee chaired by a junior minister.

In July 1940, the official North American Supply Committee was superseded by a ministerial committee of the same name and the Central Office for North American Supplies became its secretariat. One of the functions of this secretariat was to act as a channel of communication between the North American Supply Committee and the British Supply Council in North America, which was set-up in Washington at the same time.

When the Ministry of Production was created in 1942, the secretariat of the North American Supply Committee became the North (later Joint) American Secretariat which was responsible to the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Production, and to the Secretary of the War Cabinet.

The work of the secretariat altered as the Anglo-American supply arrangements developed into a general pooling of supplies and shipping for world-wide use under the direction of the Combined Boards and as semi-political supply problems came to the forefront (e.g. those connected with relief supplies). The Joint American Secretariat came to be more a small central staff bringing new problems into focus and making adjustments to meet them.