The Confederate States General Staff was a large body of officers within the Confederate States Army who were charged with centralized planning and who had supervision over all field armies. The Confederate States adopted the General Staff model in response to the United States decision to adopt the model in the decades leading up to the Great War - the US having emulated the German Army's General Staff following its defeat in the Second Mexican War. However, the CS General Staff was much looser in its control over the CS Army than were its role models. It was also more politically motivated: by the time of the Great War, the General Staff had become dominated by the upper class Whig descendants of the heroes of the War of Secession and the Second Mexican War.