War and Conflict Subject Specialist Network

Partnerships Assistant Oliver Scurrah reflects on his time at IWM.

As the tide of the Second World War changed decisively against Nazi Germany, the Reich Propaganda Ministry and the military believed that the war could still be won if the ultimate weapon was deployed – the fanatical belief in the ideology of the Third Reich. German researcher and journalist Katherine Quinlan-Flatter shares insights from her research into this secret scheme.

In this blog, I provide an insight into contributing to Imperial War Museums’ War and Conflict Subject Specialist Network, through the government funded Kickstart Scheme. I share my reflections on exploring IWM's photography collection, and some tips you might find useful for researching the IWM Collections webpage.

Britain’s history, and the ways in which we commemorate it today, is often presented as a battleground. Yet the findings from a pilot project conducted with two secondary schools, featured in Part One of this blog post in 2021, offers a possible route through these choppy waters. Steve Ballinger, Director of Communications at British Future, shares findings from the Remember Together project.

In this blog, I provide an insight into working alongside Imperial War Museums’ Second World War and Holocaust Partnerships Programme through the government funded Kickstart Scheme. I offer a detailed account of my visit to the recently opened Second World War and the Holocaust Galleries at IWM London – and consider my next steps once my time with this programme is over.

How would you respond if you were to be asked about aeroplanes in the Second World War? Perhaps by referring to a war film like The Dam Busters? Adam Kilgour, a recent Multimedia Journalism graduate volunteering with the IWM War Memorial Register, shares insights from his thesis looking at the Second World War narratives told in film.

Clare Lawlor, from IWM’s Public Engagement and Learning team, shares the story of a red jumper that makes up part of the new Holocaust Galleries at IWM London. She explains what this simple artefact can tell us about a young woman’s experiences during the Holocaust.

Operation Weserübung, the German invasion of neutral Denmark and Norway, took place between April 9 and June 10, 1940. Weserübung was referred to as “the military measures for the protection of the neutrality of Denmark and Norway”. Katherine Quinlan-Flatter, journalist and historian, shares some of her research into how German newspapers during the Second World War reported the Norwegian campaign in 1940.

Travel the world and take a trip back in time with this colourful trailer highlighting rarely seen and oft-sun-soaked Central Office of Information films, newly digitised thanks to IWMs five-year preservation project Digital Futures. Shared across The National Archives and the British Film Institute’s social media platforms, as well as IWM's digital platforms, this trailer is part of this year's cross-collections collaborative project ‘COI 75’ (#COI75, #Collections United).