SEXTANT

SEXTANT, codename for the Allied Cairo conference held from 23 to 26 November and 3 to 7 December 1943 to discuss future strategy (see Grand Alliance). In between, Churchill and Roosevelt and the Combined Chiefs of Staff attended EUREKA, the Teheran conference. EUREKA had been arranged because a Chinese delegation, led by Chiang Kai-shek, was also attending SEXTANT and Stalin, who unlike China was not at war with Japan, had refused to send a representative or come himself.

In Cairo, both Allied leaders were accompanied by large delegations. As well as the Chinese, there was also a delegation led by Mountbatten, South-East Asia Command's supreme commander. Initial discussions centred on South-East Asia and Chiang Kai-shek's desire for amphibious warfare operations in the Bay of Bengal to coincide with a proposed Chinese intervention in the Burma campaign. Churchill called these discussions lengthy, complicated, and minor. Despite British reluctance, Roosevelt promised Chiang just such an operation. The consequences of EUREKA later forced him to retract, but the Cairo Declaration that was issued stated that all three powers were agreed upon future operations against Japan. It also stated that Japan would be stripped of all the territories it had acquired since 1914; that those taken from the Chinese would be returned to China, ‘such as Manchukuo and Formosa, and the Pescadores’, and that ‘in due course’ Korea would become free and independent.

Discussions during the second part of SEXTANT included those with President Inönü on the likelihood of Turkey entering the war on the Allies' side, and Roosevelt told Churchill that he had decided to appoint Eisenhower to command the Normandy landings (see OVERLORD). See also diplomacy.