Researching captured documents at IWM

[TormodChristiansen]

Any of the board menbers that have researched the holdings of captured German documents at IWM?

It seems that a large amount of captured documents were taken from Norway and other former occupied places after the capitulation in 1945 and sent to UK for evaluation.(https://www.iwm.org.uk/sites/default..._Documents.pdf)

Firstly, I do not know how much of the documents that have survived until today after the first postwar initial dissemination. Have also heard from other historians that it is hard to hire locals to do research jobs at IWM because of the location and short openings hours, also the staff does not respond to copy requests.

I have done several searches on the IWM archive site (https://www.iwm.org.uk/collections) , but it looks like that there is a large discrepancy between the digitized and the analogue index catalogues in IWM unlike the situation at TNA Kew. Can someone confirm or refute this last claim?

[Mikael Olrog]

It is well worth a visit - depending on what your interest is. Possibly the best thing would go to Duxford and visit the archive in person since the main body of the documents are there. I've not visited in many years but apparently they've reorganized the set up so I don't know how it works today. If you go to IWM London they will ship documents there - but then you need to know well in advance which files you want to look at.

[Steve Coates]

Following up on Mikael's post, it really does depend on what you're interested in. If it's operational material as opposed to type development, then it's likely to be less use.

Your central point about the difficulty in searching the various collections online is valid. The searching aids for a number of these collections still consist of old index cards (GDC / T-2 microfilms) or books (HEC / UNT collection). Virtually nothing has been digitised.

Speaking personally, I've not come across anything relating to the Luftwaffe in Norway during my visits there but it's possible they hold something as it's not easy to get a grasp on the totality of their holdings.

[TormodChristiansen]

Thanks for the replies to both of you.

The reply from Steve confirmed my fears about going to IWM Duxford. When traveling to new archives, I always try to get there with a certain signatures on my check list, but for the captured documents at IWM this could be difficult.

[Steve Coates]

By definition, pretty much any first visit would be a scoping mission.

If you can tell me what you're trying to research, I may be able to come up with some suggestions for you.