Cabinet Office: Historical Section, Enemy Documents Section: Files and Papers

This series consists of the files and papers of the Enemy Documents Section (EDS) of the Historical Section. The series includes a number of campaign narratives or 'appreciations' based on captured enemy sources. There are also many papers on specific subjects. The series also contains correspondence files of the inter-departmental Joint Consultative Committee on Captured Enemy Documents (JCC), maintained by EDS and a few files of the AL series.

Chronological within original subject arrangement

For copies of captured enemy records see GFM

German records copied by the EDS are now in the Imperial War Museum, Foreign Documents Section, together with a small collection of Italian records and some others taken over from the Cabinet Office main archive in 1948-1949.

Some pieces in this series originally contained NATO documents, which were extracted and replaced with dummy cards when the pieces were transferred to the PRO. The dummy cards state that the extracted documents are retained by the Cabinet Office. With the agreement of the PRO, these extracted NATO documents were destroyed by the Cabinet Office in May 2001. Researchers wishing to seek access to extracted documents should apply to the NATO Archives in Brussels.

From 1991 Cabinet Office

The EDS was formed in 1948 to provide the compilers of the United Kingdom histories of the Second World War with campaign narratives and information about enemy policies and operations from original sources. Selected captured German documents, held at the time by the American authorities, were sent to EDS where copies were made. The originals were returned to Washington, until their restitution to the Federal German Government.

The Joint Consultative Committee on Captured Enemy Documents was concerned with the process of exchange of documents between Washington and London, and their ultimate restitution

The JCC operated under the auspices of the Foreign Office from 1947 until 1959 when it became a Cabinet Committee; it was dissolved in 1978.

The EDS was disbanded in 1988 on completion of the military histories.