History of the Second World War

The History of the Second World War is the official history of Britain's contribution to the Second World War and was published by Her Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO). This immense project was sub-divided into areas to ease publication. Military operations are covered in the United Kingdom Military Series, the United Kingdom Civil Series covers aspects of the civilian war effortand the Foreign Policy series; the Intelligence series and the Medical series are eponymous. There are other volumes not under the aegis of the series but were published by HMSO and may be read as adjuncts, as they cover matters not considered in great detail or in one case at all in the main series. Further volumes, published either after the privatisation of HMSO or in the series about the Special Operations Executive, are also useful.

The volumes were intended to be read individually, rather than in series, which led to some overlapping but in their introductions to their parts of the series, Sir Keith Hancock and Sir James Butler wrote that this was to obviate a need to read more volumes than cover the part of the war effort being studied; Hancock edited the Civil Series and Butler the Military Series; the first volume appeared in 1949 and the last in 1993, with a revised edition of another volume appearing in 2004. An unorthodox decision was to cover the conflict from a theatre of operations point of view rather than by services, to acknowledge that military operations were intimately linked.

The original works lacked references to unpublished sources when published before 1970. Government archives were opened to an extent by the Public Records Act 1958 and the Public Records Act 1966. The works were published with only references to published sources. British constitutional conventions on the anonymity of government officials and ministers were also followed, leading to a somewhat detached narrative style in some cases. A parallel series of volumes for official use were printed, which referenced the unpublished sources in manuscript, in red ink. A few official copies escaped into public libraries and these additions can be seen.

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