War Office: Allied Forces, Mediterranean Theatre: Military Headquarters Papers, Second...

This series deals with Allied operations in the Mediterranean Theatre, and covers the campaigns in North Africa, Sicily and Italy; military aid to the Balkans and Greece; and military government of occupied territories. The papers are those of the combined Anglo-American forces of Allied Force Headquarters (AFHQ), activated in September 1942. Records of units which were not integrated were for the most part treated separately after the War, and are not included. American records were returned to the United States.

Also included are the records of the various Commissions and Boards controlled by AFHQ and of Formation Headquarters immediately under its command. This includes some of the Mediterranean Allied Air Forces, as well as Headquarters Allied Armies Italy (15 Army Group), Allied Military Headquarters (Balkans), Land Forces (Greece), Military Liaison Headquarters (Albania) and (Yugoslavia) and Headquarters Allied Commission (Italy).

The bulk of the collection, however, is made up of records of the Supreme Allied Commander's Secretariat, the branches G 1 (Adjutant- General, responsible for the overall records management of combined forces and those including many extraneous as well as its own records), G 2 (Intelligence), G 3 (Operations), G 4 (Quartermaster-General), and G 5 (Military Government and Civil Affairs), and the Psychological Warfare branch.

At the end of the War the records were microfilmed, at the direction of the Combined Chiefs of Staff, prior to their distribution between the allied authorities. An Analytical Guide was prepared at this time (WO 204/10096). The series is arranged according to the contents list in this Guide.

At some stage, possibly during microfilming, the order of the papers in some files was disturbed.

The former references of WO 204/11519 onwards cross-refer to numbers in a catalogue currently held by the Ministry of Defence. This catalogue shows to which section of AFHQ the file originally belonged. For example, files in the 0100 series followed by the code 11E refer to G2 - Intelligence (Operational Intelligence Section), and those followed by the code 11S belonged to G2 - Intelligence (Civil Security Section). Former references of WO 204/1-11518 are of little value, since they only appear in the catalogue as secondary to the main series headings.

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