3. SECRET FILES
FROM WORLD WARS TO COLD WAR
Intelligence, Strategy & Diplomacy
Source: The National Archives UK
4. KEY FACTS
• Materials date from 1873 to 1953
• Key subjects
• Intelligence
• Foreign Policy
• Military History
• International Relations
• The numbers
• Files 4,504
• Documents 12,208
• Pages 147,600
5. Rudolph Hess
SECRETS contains: 21 files of conversations between Hess and
officials along with news clippings, handwritten notes, official docs,
personal letters, medical reports
• May 10th, 1941 Hess flies to Scotland to try to negotiate peace with the UK
• May 1st- June 30th, 1941, Hess and authorities hold series of conversations
6. America Declares War
SECRETS includes Japanese communique intercepted by MI6, from
Japanese ambassador in Berlin to Foreign Minister in Tokyo. This details a
conversation with Ribbentrop who says ‘…the immediate participation in the
war by Germany…was a matter of course’.
• Dec 7th, 1941 Japanese pilots bomb US naval base in Pearl Harbor
• Dec 8th, 1941 America declares war
7. Operation Overlord
• June 3rd, 1944 – 3 days before Operation Overlord (Battle of Normandy)
• June 6th, 1944 Operation Overlord begins
SECRETS contains CAB files, first inter-service committee in the UK
Files indicate that there has been ‘no intelligence to suggest the enemy has
accurately assessed our area of assault’ and ‘no special u-Boat patrols
detected’
8. Dudley Clarke:
Pioneer of Military Deception
SECRETS includes 12 documents about the case including the photos,
telegrams and how the issue continued into 1942 when a letter
threatening to publish these appeared in a Berlin newspaper!
• October 17th, 1941 ‘Times’ war correspondent arrested in Madrid
• October 21st, 1941 British Embassy sends these photographs taken
by Spanish police to London
9. Pricing – Upon Application
For more information visit:
www.secretintelligencefiles.com
Thank you!
Editor's Notes
My name is Gillian Howcroft and I am the US Western States Sales Manager for Taylor & Francis journals.
I’m based in SOCAL. I’m here today with my colleague, Stacy Stanislaw, LMT to talk about
- Secret files – from World Wars to Cold Wars
Secret information and intelligence is being shared between government – imagine being able to get access to decoded secret intelligence or minutes from secret government committees for your research! Sound good?
Well T&F did just that. Today, I am going to share some of the intelligence and foreign policy files the British government gathered over the last 2 centuries.
All of what you are about to see was previously classified! Our selectors, academics who specialize in military history, intelligence, foreign policy have carefully curated this collection
So lets start by asking, if you want to know a secret? [Nod]
Click
Ours is that Routledge T&F has a brand new product!
The National Archive supplied the content and we the technology. You will see top quality images of the original documents, you can zoom in and out of them, you can look at a single image or thumbnails of the whole document
What else can you expect? Powerful search and filtering to get to the result you are looking for – you can preview your document through looking at the key words within the context of that document, then download it or save it for a literature review
The original audience for this information was small and select but now it is accessible to us all – you don’t need to travel to the UK Archives as you previously would have – it can now be made available through your Library
Just as we digitized our own journal collections, we are using that skill & knowledge to bring more primary & secondary historical and cultural collections to light – collections that work alongside our existing content, and diversify them
As you would expect from a world leading publisher like T&F, the platform for using this new product is excellent and the architecture will house each digital resource we have – providing a consistent user experience
So without further ado – what can we find in the product? I encourage you to take our free trial or see myself or my colleague Stacy after the presentation – I’ve picked out a few highlights which really are just the tip of the iceberg.
The key facts are:
Coverage 1873-1953 – previously classified materials from the British Government secret intelligence and foreign policy files
4 key conflicts – Spanish Civil War, WW2, Korean War and the Cold War
WW2 is central to the resource BUT the narrative is about understanding the years prior to and the international situation that led to War. The files also tell the story of the evolution of organisations like MI5 and MI6. The hard stop at 1953 is simple: with the end of the Korean War and the death of Stalin, phase 1 of the Cold War came to a close as does this product. T
The content has been selected to offer fresh insights into well-known events – the day to day minutia recorded for posterity paints a wonderful picture of the decisions made at the time using the evidence available -
All of this translate into : Files 4,504 Docs 12,208 Pages 147,600
Rudolf Hess was appointed Deputy Fuhrer to Adolf Hitler in 1933, he served in this position until 1941.
We know that 10 May 1941 he flew solo to Scotland in an attempt to negotiate peace with the UK and was taken prisoner.
Within Secrets there are 79 documents and 20+ files covering containing transcriptions of conversations and interrogations with Rudolf Hess, reports on his mental health and suicide attempts, and original handwritten letters he wrote to Hitler and to family and friends during his wartime captivity in Britain.
This document is dated 15th May, 5 days after his capture. He starts off by moaning about how noisy the guards are at night and how he would like books. He is quickly steered to talk about America,
“The Germans reckoned with American intervention and were not afraid of it. They knew all about American aircraft production and the quality of the aircraft. Germany could out build England and America combined.
Germany had no designs on America. The so-called German peril was a ludicrous figment of imagination. Hitler's interests were European.” And so on..
The intelligence gathered provided detail Germany’s plans for European domination, their armament programme and strategic plans for winning the war. Very useful.
7 months later, we arrive at Dec 7th 1941
We know that on Dec 7th, 1941 Japanese pilots bomb US naval base in Pearl Harbor
And on Dec 8th, 1941 President Roosevelt declares war
What we know now is that on Dec 7th at 11pm in Berlin, the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin is writing to his Foreign Minister in Tokyo to confirm a conversation he had had with Ribbentrop (Hilter’s Foreign Minister and close confidante)who says:
“that although he had not yet secured Hitler's sanction,…the immediate participation in the war by Germany…was a matter of course”
We can actually see this message in SECRETS because it was intercepted by MI6 and decoded at Bletchley Park and then delivered to Churchill and must have been subject of various conversations especially the timing must have been pretty soon after the bombing given the time difference between Hawaii & Europe?
US General Dwight Eisenhower launches Operation Overlord on 6th June 1944
We know now how pivotal this Battle was in taking back German-occupied Western Europe all we had to go on then was the intelligence we had received and which can now be shared.
The date on the file you see is 3rd June so close to launch date! These files indicate the favorable conditions for the assault because the enemy seems unaware of where the assault will take place and has not stepped up u-Boat patrols indicating ignorance.
SECRETS HAS 263 documents and 12 files on Operation Overlord
I now want to finish with a slightly more unusual insight into one of the pioneers of military deception, Brigadier Dudley Clarke.
Going back in time to 1941 October 17th, we see photographs of the Times newspaper’s war correspondent who has been arrested in Madrid dressed as a woman. He only arrived on the 16th! October 21st, these photos are sent from the British Embassy in Spain to the Foreign Office.
Within SECRETS, there is a flurry of coded messages between the Embassy in Cairo (he was based in the Middle East) to the FO saying help we need to get him out. The Spanish police thought he was simply cross-dressing and let him go but the Germans thought he was a spy. They were right!
Dudley Clarke was the master of visual deception and his ideas on creating double agents helped define Allied deception strategy during the war – this is a good example of that.
SECRETS includes 12 documents about the case including the photos, telegrams and how the issue rumbled on into 1942 when the Embassy in Madrid got a letter saying they were about to be published in a Berlin newspaper.
That’s all we have time but if you wish to know more and find out pricing, see Stacy and I afterwards.
Thank you
