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.
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