Ration Book
©IWM (Documents.8012)

Our documents cover a wealth of personal experience and testimony, both British and foreign, as well as official records.

Private Papers

IWM holds over 20,000 individual collections of private papers, principally comprising unpublished diaries, letters and memoirs written primarily by British and Commonwealth servicemen and women since 1914 and by civilians mainly during the two world wars. We also hold many important documents from victims and survivors of the Holocaust.

Foreign and Related Documents

We also look after a large collection of foreign documents, including the official British records of the major war crimes trials conducted at Nuremberg and Tokyo, together with related documents from the Second World War which mainly concern the German and Japanese war efforts.

Foreign Documents Factsheet

Miscellaneous Documents Factsheet

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Related Objects

Photograph of Operation Mincemeat planning documents
© IWM 26145/C
Second World War

Operation Mincemeat

Operation Mincemeat was a deception conceived by British Intelligence to fool the Germans regarding the true target for the Allied invasion of Sicily. Behind the well-known battles and campaigns of the Second World War lies a secret history.