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OSS/London: Special Operations Branch and Secret Intelligence Branch War Diaries is a themed microfilm collection relating to US Office of Strategic Services (OSS)intelligence analyses and special operations in Western Europe, Jun 1942-Jun 1945. The collection includes Special Operations Branch organisation charts and directives, orders and summaries, Jun 1942-Jul 1944; Special Operations (SO) Branch and OSS training schedules; papers relating to Special Operations Branch liaison with Scandinavian Special Operations Executive (SOE) Section; reports on military and strategic objectives relating to Operation OVERLORD, the Allied invasion of France, Jan-Sep 1944; estimates of Special Operations personnel strength, Apr-Jun 1944; reports on resistance movements in Norway, Denmark, and Poland; summaries of Secret Intelligence Branch Operations, Apr-Sep 1944; list of decorations, commendations, and payments to families of the Special Operations and Secret Intelligence Branch casualties; biographies of Secret Intelligence personnel; reports from Secret Intelligence Branch operations in the Netherlands, France, Poland, Czechoslovakia; Germany; Secret Intelligence Branch liaison with the OSS; photographs of American and British Special Operations Branch officers; photographs of Maquis, French resistance, operatives; report from the Special Mission on German Methods of Demolition and Sabotage, Sep-Dec 1944; reports on Polish resistance fighters in France, 1944; lists of code names and code words used by the Special Operations Branch; reports from military, demolition, intelligence gathering, and espionage missions in Western Europe, 1944; after action summaries from the OSS Reports and Registry Division, London, and the OSS Reports Board, Paris, France, 1 Jan-15 Jun 1945.

Papers relating to role of 6 Guards Tank Brigade in Operation BLUECOAT, Normandy, Jul 1944; operations of 7 Armoured Division, Aug-Nov 1944, including capture of Ghent; 1 Guards Brigade, Feb 1944-May 1945, including Battle of River Po and situation reports, Northern Italy and Southern Austria; pamphlets, 1943-1946 including 21 Army Group reports; campaign maps, including Turkey, 1922-1923; France, Belgium, Holland and Germany, 1944 and Italy and Austria, 1945; working papers for unpublished typescript 'Airborne Forces'. Notes and draft papers of Maj Peter V Verney for Anzio 1944 An Unexpected Fury (Batsford, 1978) and planned publications on Marlborough's wars and 'The Gaiety and the Glory: the Irishman at War'.

Copies of papers, 1940-1982, including narrative manuscript diary covering service with 3 Div Royal Engineers, Belgium and France, May-Jun 1940, with printed map entitled Lille-Ghent, North West Europe, sheet No 2, scale 1: 250, 000 (GSGS 4042, War Office, 1938); narrative manuscript diary covering service with 51 Highland Div Royal Engineers, North West Europe, Oct 1944 and Feb-May 1945, with typescript nominal roll of officers, list of casualties between Jun 1944 and May 1945, and typescript programme for the 51 Highland Div victory parade, Bremerhaven, Germany, May 1945; five printed maps of North West Europe entitled 'Brussels and Liege', 'Walcheren and Amsterdam', 'Osnabruck', 'Hamburg', 'Hannover' (no publication details or scale), with printed map of the Rhine entitled 'Outline of 51(H) Div RE plan, Operation PLUNDER', annotated with dispositions of Royal Engineers units for the Rhine crossing, 1945; correspondence with Maj Karol John Drewienkiewicz, 25 Field Sqn Royal Engineers, 1982, concerning operations of 3 Div Royal Engineers (May 1940); typescript text of lecture, given at Antwerp, 1982, on operations to clear the Scheldt Estuary, 1944.

War Cabinet Minutes (HMSO), 1939-1945 is a themed microfiche collection containing copies of the minutes of the War Cabinet Meetings, Sep 1939-Jul 1945, and Cabinet Conclusions and Confidential Annexes, 1941-1945. Meeting minutes include British plans to create discord amongst the German High Command, Nov 1939; criticism of the military campaign in Norway, May 1940; First Lord of the Admiralty Winston (Leonard Spencer) Churchill's criticism of the Allied propaganda campaign in France, May 1940; speculation on the ability of the German population to sustain prolonged war, May 1940; reaction to the Allied withdrawals in France and Belgium, May 1940; the debate over the possible compromise peace with Germany, 26-28 May 1940; the decision to intern all enemy aliens in the United Kingdom; May 1940; Churchill's reaction to American isolationism, May 1940; the seizing of French warships in British and Egyptian harbours and the sinking of French warships at Mers-el-Kebir, Egypt, 23 Jun 1940; straining Anglo-French relations, Jul 1940; the Anglo-American 'destroyers for bases' agreement, Aug 1940; Churchill's attempt to take to court the Sunday Pictorial and the Daily Mirror over the newspapers' alleged anti-Government editorials, Oct 1940; preparations for the possible German invasion of the Britain, 1940; civil defence precautions in Britain, 1940; the British intervention in Greece, 1941; speculation on Soviet military collapses following the invasion of the Soviet Union by German armed forces, Jun 1941; Churchill's appeals to US President Franklin Delano Roosevelt for American intervention in the war, 1941; reaction over the fall of Singapore and Malaya to Japanese armed forces, Feb 1942; Anglo-American preparations for the invasion of North Africa, 1942; naval and air operations against France, 1943; the 'Beveridge Report' on social security in Britain, 1943; reports on Allied conferences at Casablanca, Jan 1943, and Washington, May 1943; the Allied decision to invade France made at the QUADRANT Conference, Quebec, Canada, Aug 1943; the planning and conduct of Operation OVERLORD, the Allied invasion of France, Jun 1944; the effect of the bombardment of London by German V1 pilotless aircraft and possible RAF reprisals against German civilian targets, Jun 1944; post-war reconstruction and rehabilitation in Europe, Jul 1944; plans for the Allied occupation of Germany and Austria, Nov 1944; British intervention in Greece in order to prevent a Communist take-over of the peninsula, Nov 1944; the establishment of the United Nations, 1945; arrangements for celebrating the end of the war in Europe, May 1945; the British General Election, Jul 1945.

Copies of extracts from 'Wells, a family history', produced by Tessa J Harfield, 1988, principally comprising a brief account of the life and RAF career of Sidney McLeod Wells (Wg Cdr Maurice Clunes Wells' brother), 1906-1941, written by Harfield in 1988; transcription of Brig (then Lt) Brian Gordon Wells' account of a big game hunt in Northern Rhodesia, 1931, written in [1931-1932], with his record of service, 1923-1955, dated 1955; transcription of 'My career in the RAF, 1935-1950' written by Wg Cdr Maurice Clunes Wells, written in [1980-1985]. Original manuscript of 'My career in the RAF, 1935-1950'. Photographs relating to Wg Cdr Maurice Clunes Wells' army career, dated [1940-1945] and [1980-1988], notably his internment as a POW, [1940-1945].

British publications relating to the Allied war effort and the Home Front, 1940-1954, including editions of His Majesty's Stationery Office (HMSO) pamphlets Frontline, 1940-41; The official story of the civil defence of Britain (HMSO, London, 1942), Combined Operations, 1940-1942 (HMSO, London, 1943), Target: Germany. The US Army Air Forces' official story of the VIII Bomber Command's first year over Europe (HMSO, London, 1944), Among those present: the official story of the Pacific Islands at war (HMSO, London, 1946). Also pamphlet, 'The battle of South London', by Arthur L Woolf (Crystal Publications Ltd, London, c 1945), with photographs and accounts of bombing in South London, Second World War, and Westminster at War by William Sansom (Faber and Faber, London, 1947).