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 a number of areas to ease publication. Military operations are covered in the United Kingdom Military Series. There are four other series: the United Kingdom Civil Series covering various aspects of the civilian part of the war effort; the Foreign Policy series; the Intelligence series; and the Medical series. There are also a number of other volumes that do not come under the aegis of the actual series, but were published by HMSO and may usefully be read as adjuncts to it 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 separate series about SOE, are also useful.

The volumes were written to be read individually, rather than as a whole series. That inevitably lead to some duplication of coverage in the series, but in their respective introductions to their parts of the series, Sir Keith Hancock and Sir James Butler explain why the decision was taken: to eliminate the need to read more volumes than cover the particular part of the war effort desired to be studied. Hancock edited the Civil Series and Butler the Military. The first volume of the series appeared in 1949, and the last as recently as 1993, with a revised edition of another volume appearing in 2004.

Another somewhat unusual decision for the series was to cover the conflict from a theatre of operations point of view rather than an individual service point of view. This decision was taken to acknowledge the fact that military operations of the era were so joint and so interlinked that to try and separate out each service's contribution would have been futile.

The original works also lack references to unpublished sources when published prior to 1970. In the 1940s, it was not anticipated that government archives would be opened at any time within the foreseeable future. The Public Records Act 1958 and the Public Records Act 1966 were still in the future. The decision was therefore taken to publish the works with only references to published sources. British constitutional conventions on the anonymity of Government officials and ministers are also followed, leading to a somewhat detached narrative style in some cases.

However, a parallel series of volumes, for official use, were printed, which referenced the unpublished sources; and these references were added in manuscript, in red ink. A few official copies escaped into public libraries and these additions can been seen. The additional sources can also been seen in some of the Hyperwar versions (see External Links).