Catalogue description Government Code and Cypher School: World War II Official Histories

Official histories of the war written after its conclusion by Government Code and Cypher School Staff mainly using signals intelligence as the source with captured enemy documents and information received from captured enemy officers as sources. The history is thus written largely from the point of view of the Axis operational commanders, who originated or received the messages. Japan is touched on only in terms of liaison, operational cooperation and trade with the Western Axis powers, mostly in a naval context.

The series includes a static description of the German and Italian navies, which details minutely organisation, administration, communications, technical equipment and other resources. So far as the German Navy was concerned, these volumes were almost entirely based on the captured archive and virtually no use was made of Sigint.

The series also includes files on the course of the naval war in the various theatres. The main contribution was from Sigint but again considerable use was made of other sources including the war diary of Admiral Doenitz.

Papers of the expert writers of the histories are in HW 50

Foreign Office, Government Code and Cypher School, 1922-1946