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Official: War Cabinet, 1939 - 1945

 Series
Reference Code: GBR/0014/CHAR 23

Scope and Contents

The War Cabinet papers contain mainly printed material, and some notes and correspondence, arising from WSC's positions, as First Lord of the Admiralty, from 3 September 1939 to 9 May 1940, and then as Prime Minister and Minister of Defence, from 10 May 1940 to 23 May 1945. Up to May 1940, the papers relate to the general conduct of the war, outside the departmental responsibility of the Admiralty. After that date, general papers are to be found in CHAR 20 (Official: Prime Minister), and CHAR 23 is almost wholly taken up by printed material, chiefly Prime Minister's Directives, and records of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, arranged chronologically.Subjects include: the general conduct of the war; defence; army, navy and air operations; relations with the United States and Soviet Union; food production; the war in the Far East; records of the conferences at Quebec, [Canada], Washington [United States], Malta and Yalta [Soviet Union]; the occupation of Germany; the future of Yugoslavia [later Bosnia and Herzegovina, Croatia, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, and Slovenia]; the future of Poland; the establishment of the United Nations; post-war civil aviation; post-war reconstruction; the Emergency Business Committee, set up for the General Election.

Dates

  • Creation: 1939 - 1945

Conditions Governing Access

From the Fonds:

The Churchill Papers are made available to researchers using Churchill Archives Centre and worldwide in digital format. The digital edition of the Churchill Papers is published by Bloomsbury Academic and is available online to subscribing institutions at churchillarchive.com. The Churchill archive is freely available in our reading rooms and onsite at Churchill College (via the Churchill College wireless network). Researchers can download images of documents directly from churchillarchive.com and so are encouraged to consider bringing a laptop or other device for this purpose. For conservation reasons, the fragile originals are no longer issued to researchers.

This digital edition is open to researchers unless otherwise marked in the catalogue. Some material has been closed by the Cabinet Office or by Churchill Archives Centre in accordance with data protection legislation.

Language of Materials

English

External Documents

Existence and Location of Copies

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Repository Details

Part of the Churchill Archives Centre Repository

Contact:
Churchill Archives Centre
Churchill College
Cambridge Cambridgeshire CB3 0DS United Kingdom
+44 (0)1223 336087