Are you interested in British intelligence, foreign policy, international relations, and military history in the 20th century? Then Secret Files from World Wars to Cold Wars: Intelligence, Strategy and Diplomacy may be just what you’re looking for.
Secret Files from World Wars to Cold Wars provides access to British government secret intelligence and foreign policy files from 1873 to 1953, with the majority of files dating from the 1930s and 1940s.
You can access Secret Files from World Wars to Cold Wars via the Databases A-Z list or Digital Primary Source and Archive Collections guide.
Spanning four key 20th century conflicts with a spotlight on the Second World War, the material in Secret Files, sourced from The National Archives, U.K., enables rich research into intelligence, foreign policy, international relations, and military history in the period of Appeasement, through the Second World War, and into the early Cold War.
Screenshot of page from ‘Government Code and Cypher School: Signals Intelligence Passed to the Prime Minister, Messages and Correspondence’, HW 1/1355, 10 February 1943. From Secret Files from World Wars to Cold War.
At the heart of this resource are the files of the Permanent Undersecretary’s Department (PUSD). The PUSD was the point of liaison between the Foreign Office and the British intelligence establishment, and these files document intelligence activities and their influence on foreign policy from 1873 to 1951, providing new insights into key moments of twentieth-century history.
One of the highlights of the resource, the HW 1 series, consists of original intelligence reports from German, Japanese, Italian, and other nations’ signals that were intercepted, deciphered, and translated by the British Government Code and Cypher School at Bletchley Park. Covering the period 1940–1945, the HW 1 files include reports derived from high-grade cyphers such as ENIGMA. These reports were delivered to Winston Churchill in batches several times each day throughout the Second World War, and in many cases include Churchill’s own handwritten annotations in red ink.
There are a few Help videos available on the database to help you get the best out of the database: Help Videos.
You can access Secret Files from World Wars to Cold Wars via the Databases A-Z list or Digital Primary Source and Archive Collections guide.
Access is only available to current students and staff at the University of Edinburgh.
Caroline Stirling – Academic Support Librarian for School of Social and Political Science