Research into air power history has grown in popularity, but much of this scholarship centres on operational activities with little study into matters of support, especially logistics; this paucity of research is particularly evident with regards to the British Royal Air Force (RAF). This thesis examines RAF logistics during the Second World War through five research questions, under the generic themes of Transformation, Sustainment and Flexibility. Its research methodology is innovative in that it uses an inter-disciplinary approach through the use of a management science model to conduct an historical study. First, it considers how the RAF’s logistics organisation came into being and how it was shaped by the Royal Flying Corps’ experience during the First World War. The inter-war years are then examined with particular emphasis on how the Expansion Programme of the mid to late 1930s shaped the logistics organisation, up to the outbreak of the Second World War in September 1939. The thesis then takes a detailed look at how RAF logistics was organised and how it operated its supply chain throughout the war including: manning, command and control, procurement, warehousing and transport. The final part of the thesis examines how logistic services were provided to the front line, both at home and overseas.

In 2013 the candidate published Operation Crossbow: The Untold Story of Photographic Intelligence and the Search for Hitler’s V Weapons. Through a detailed examination of the relevant primary sources – including aerial photography recently released to the National Collection of Aerial Photography in Edinburgh - this book investigates the role of British photographic interpretation in the hunt for German V-weapons during Operation Crossbow. In so doing, it provides a wealth of information on such matters as the wartime development of photographic interpretation, the techniques used by the interpreters, the personalities involved, the significance of photographic intelligence to the operation, and the wider politics of wartime intelligence. In particular, it contests some of the claims made by R. V. Jones in his memoir, Most Secret War (1978), about the role of photographic interpretation in the Crossbow investigation. It also demonstrates the wider importance of photographic intelligence in the British military history of the war and offers some explanation as to why this has become a ‘missing dimension’ of wartime intelligence studies. The critical review seeks to provide an academic superstructure for the book, which was intended for a general readership, and demonstrates that the research included therein is commensurate with that required for a PhD.

From the Italian declaration of war on 10 June 1940 through to the end of December 1944, the British and their allies waged a major campaign against Axis shipping in the Mediterranean. Uniquely for the British, this campaign took the form of a combined arms offensive throughout its conduct, and utilized all four methods of attacking shipping; surface vessels, submarines, aircraft and mine warfare. This thesis approaches the campaign thematically, examining each of the four methods individually. The priority given to the campaign, the forces and equipment available throughout, the tactics used and their development, the successes achieved in numbers and tonnage of merchant vessels sunk and the losses in numbers and casualties are all considered for each method. By examining these factors and the relevant quantitative data, the efficacy of each form of attack is determined and a final comparison of the four different methods made. The thesis concludes that overall, torpedo aircraft were the most effective method due to their ratio of high success and low number of personnel casualties, despite considerable losses of aircraft. Submarines were also very successful but ultimately more costly. The thesis demonstrates that mine warfare might well have achieved significant results had a greater priority been placed on it and that surface vessels no longer retained the ability to operate successfully for sustained periods in an anti-shipping role unless in an area of aerial and naval superiority.

This thesis integrates archaeological survey, aerial photographs and historical documents to undertake the first analysis of the conflict landscapes and military history of some of the most important German logistics facilities in northern France during the Battle of Normandy in 1944. Post-war survival of features has been remarkably good in this forested setting and this likely constitutes one of the best- preserved and most extensive examples of a non-hardened WWII archaeological landscape yet documented in northwest Europe. Over 900 discrete archaeological earthworks have been mapped and interpreted with the aid of primary source material from both Allied and German archives to characterise munitions, fuel and rations depots in the Forêt Domaniale des Andaines around Bagnoles-de-l’Orne, Orne Département, Basse-Normandie. These landscapes also preserve bomb craters associated with air raids on the facilities by the US Ninth Air Force and these have been mapped and analysed to show that despite 46 separate attacks by over 1000 aircraft, and the dropping in excess of 1100 tons of bombs in the forest during the spring and summer of 1944, the depots continued to function and to support German Army operations until the area was occupied by American forces in August 1944. In some areas of the forest it has been possible to link discrete arrays of bomb craters to individual air raids and even specific flights of aircraft. This work is yielding new perspectives on the character and operation of fixed depots in the German logistics system in Normandy both before and during the battles of 1944, while also permitting a detailed analysis of the effectiveness of Allied intelligence gathering, targeting and bombing operations against forest-based supply facilities. In doing so it is making a unique contribution to the newly-emerging record of WWII conflict archaeology to be found in the forests of northwest Europe.

At the beginning of the Cold War, the gathering of intelligence on the Soviet Union's current and future military capability seemed a near-impossibility. Soviet high-level communications were secure against decryption. Agent networks in the USSR were very difficult to establish and of uncertain reliability. Aerial reconnaissance of warrelated targets in the Soviet Union was risky and could only be occasional. But valuable intelligence was gathered in the years 1945-55 on the USSR's frantic arms build-up, thanks to its policy towards Germans and their country. Its exploitation of Germans and its Zone of Germany in its war-related research and development and the reconstruction of its war-related industries gave British Intelligence penetrable targets in the Soviet Zone and gave great numbers of Germans sought-after information on the USSR itself. The ease of recruiting age nts in East Germany and the flight (including enticed defections) of refugees from it allowed research and development projects and uranium.-mining operations there to be penetrated. Intelligence of Soviet weapons development and of the quality of Soviet military technology was obtained. The mass interrogation of prisoners-of-war returned by the Soviets to the British Occupation Zone in the late 1940s yielded a wealth of valuable information on war-related construction and the locations of numerous intelligence targets in the Soviet Union: most importantly, those of atomic and chemical plants, aircraft and aero-engine factories, airfields, rocket development centres and other installations. When, in the period 1949-58, some 3,000 deported German scientists , engineers and technicians were sent back to their homeland from the USSR, promising sources among them were enticed West and interrogated for their knowledge of the Soviets' research and development projects. The cream of the information they provided was crucial intelligence on the locations of atomic plants and laboratories and uranium deposits; useful information on structural weaknesses in the Soviet system of scientific and economic management; expert (if out-of-date) assessments of the quality of Soviet accomplishments in atomic science, electronics and other fields; and well-informed indications as to possible lines of development in guided missile and aircraft design. One Soviet scientific defector in Germany provided similar information which influenced British perceptions of the Soviet Union's scientific potential and missile development plans. Refugees entering the British Zone from East Germany, intercepted letters and monitored telecommunications, informal contacts and, of course, secret agents all made significant contributions to the gathering of scientific and technical intelligence in Germany too. The British passed to the Americans much of the intelligence they acquired in Germany and the installations identified and located by German sources were overtlown by spyplanes in the 1950s and particularly by U-2s in the latter half of-the decade. Priceless information was obtained, which establi shed that the USSR's war-related scientific research and development and its actual military capability were both inferior to those of the West. Thus the Germans enabled Soviet security to be deeply penetrated and helped to stabilize the Cold War. They are the missing link between Ultra and the U-2.

No description available.

Throughout the Second World War, the Canadian Red Cross Society (CRCS) exerted its significant influence in the field of voluntary homefront labour to provide a vast number of services for the benefit of Canadian, Commonwealth and Allied servicemen, prisoners of war, and civilians affected by the horrors of war. These wartime programs, which cost the Society over $90 000 000, were made possible through voluntary contributions of millions of dollars from Canadian citizens mainly through the yearly Red Cross national campaigns. Because of the organization’s claim to reach over cultural, ethnic, linguistic and religious lines, it benefitted from the support of various national groups within Canada. Another important group of contributors to the Red Cross structure were women who formed the backbone of the organization’s structure. Women served in nearly every capacity within the CRCS, which allowed them to gain valuable experience in a working environment outside of the home.

Controlled dispatch of selected staff to factories abroad in the years 1938--1941 played an important role in the history of Bata Shoe Company. Due to that fact the company man-aged to preserve civilian character of the production despite the on-going Second World War. The organizing of the whole process was not a simple task, it was necessary to harmonize actions of several organizational units. The selection of certain employees eligible for the transfers to foreign countries was conducted by sophisticated methodology, but still some of the top manager's decisions were quite controversial. First of all it involved the transfers of Jewish employees, because Chairman of the Board Jan Antonin Bata considered himself to be the rescuer of the Jews. Nevertheless top managers of the group were strictly pragmatic even in this matter and it is difficult to deduce that one of the objectives of the controlled staff transfers was the protection of this national minority. We can see the same rational approach to employees of the German origin. One of the unexplained questions is the Jan Antonin Bata's unclear relationship with Nazi leaders. I tried to deal with all of these questions in this thesis and I tried to contribute to the current debate about the Bata Group's activities during the Second World War.

This thesis will examine the British way of war as experienced by two British Infantry Divisions - the 43rd ‘Wessex’ and 53rd ‘Welsh’ - during the Overlord campaign in North West Europe in 1944 and 1945. The main locus of research centres on the fighting components of those divisions; the infantry battalions and their supporting regiments. In order to understand the way the British fought this part of the war, the thesis will consider the British Army’s history since 1918: its level of expertise at the end of the First World War; the impact of inter-war changes, and the experience of the early part of the Second World War, as these factors were fundamental in shaping how the British Army operated during the period covered in this study. These themes will be considered in the first chapter. The following seven chapters will study each of the two infantry divisions in turn, to maintain a chronological order. This is so that the experiences of each division can be examined in a logical way, from their initial experiences of combat in late June 1944 through to March 1945. Naturally, their major battles will be considered but so will their minor engagements and day-to-day experiences, as this will give a good, detailed, overview of each division’s campaign. This layout of chapters is also convenient for allowing comparisons between the two divisions as the campaign progressed. This thesis contains several strands of enquiry which will consider how Montgomery’s prosecution of the war actually translated to the smaller units of the division (the battalions, 4 companies, platoons and sections). The historiography for this campaign tends to suggest that the British Army fought the war in a cautious way, and that this approach was characterised by the use of overwhelming material superiority and rehearsed set piece attacks; tactics that were designed not only to destroy the enemy, but also to avoid the heavy casualties of the major battles of the First World War; a factor that was perceived to be vital to the maintenance of fragile infantry morale. Although the basic premise of a ‘cautious’ British way of war is generally accepted (along with its attendant emphasis on consolidation of objectives rather than exploitation of opportunities, and a reliance on adherence to lengthy orders), this study will conclude that the way the war was fought at sub-divisional levels was frequently at a pace that did not allow for such caution. Instead, it was characterised by command pressure to achieve results quickly, hasty planning and a reliance on massive artillery and mortar contributions to compensate for deficiencies in anti-tank and armoured support. This thesis will further conclude that a conscious policy of casualty conservation appears not to have been a priority at divisional command level, but was instead a consideration for company, platoon and section commanders and the men that they led.

The Swedish refugee policy during the 1930’s and during the beginning of the Second World War can be described as restrictive. In the year 1939 the number of refugees in Sweden was about 4000. By the year 1945 the number was approximately 200 000. The responsibility for the reception of the refugees was mainly the governments. Since the late 1920’s, Swedish politics where largely formed by the Social Democratic party’s idea of the welfare state. Central to this idea and embodied in society was labour as almost a moral obligation. This thesis examines the relationship between the refugees, government bodies and the labour market policies in Sweden during the years for the Second World War. The purpose is to explore the government’s labour markets bodies’ relationship to refugees and labour by studying the government’s state officials. How was this relationship organized? Much of the previous research in the related area has focused on the government’s bodies rather than their state officials. Therefor this thesis adds a new perspective to this research area. The main questions of interest are how the labour market government bodies and their state officials where organized, and the challenges they were put before in the meeting with the refugees.A hypothesis for the thesis is that refugee reception and labour market politics are linked. A natural step in the reception of refugees is for government bodies to mediate them to the labour market. Refugees tend over time to transfer to labourers. A sociological theoretical approach in the thesis is that the individual is subordinated to the governing structure. In this regard, the state officials are to be seen as acting agents through the governing structure. Hence, two following questions regarding their autonomy in this structure are interesting: where the state officials to be regarded as agents acting out the policies directed to them? Where they also able to form policies? The primary source material consists of memorandums, reports and correspondence written by state officials. The research methodology is qualitative.The thesis results show that much of the government bodies’ work was made up by compromise and the ability to adapt to the current circumstances, dictated by the war. The state officials also seem to have been able to, in smaller cases, form policies. But mainly their actions should be regarded as part of a collective larger formative element (“formativt moment”) - the war itself dictated their options and formed Swedish labour market policies. The thesis also points to new areas of research. Could the same research model be applied on other, for example neutral, countries during the same period? Keywords: The Second World War, refugee reception, refugees, labour market policies, state officials