Quebec Conference

Quebec Conference, either of two Anglo-American conferences held in the city of Quebec during World War II. The first (August 11–24, 1943), code-named Quadrant, was held to discuss plans for the forthcoming Allied invasions of Italy and France and was attended by U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British Prime Minister Winston Churchill. Differences between U.S. and British strategists about the coordination of the Italian campaign with Operation Overlord (the planned Normandy Invasion) were not resolved and had to be settled at meetings in Moscow, Tehrān, and Cairo later that year. Roosevelt and Churchill met again at Quebec the following year—the Octagon Conference, September 11–16, 1944. The decision made there to advance against Germany on two western fronts, instead of pursuing a concerted drive on Berlin, was criticized in the postwar period because it allowed the Soviet army to take possession of the German capital. This second Quebec Conference also resulted in a revised timetable to invade the Philippines, thus resulting in the Battle of Leyte Gulf in October 1944 and the subsequent struggle for Okinawa in late spring 1945.

(Read Sir John Keegan’s Britannica entry on the Normandy Invasion.)