Imperial War Museum; Department of Documents

IWM was founded on 5 March 1917 when the War Cabinet approved a proposal by Sir Alfred Mond MP for the creation of a national war museum to record the events still taking place during the Great War. The intention was to collect and display material as a record of everyone’s experiences during that war - civilian and military - and to commemorate the sacrifices of all sections of society.

The interest taken by the Dominion governments led to the renaming of the National War Museum to Imperial War Museum later in 1917. It was formally established by Act of Parliament in 1920 and a governing Board of Trustees appointed.

The museum was opened in the Crystal Palace by King George V on 9 June 1920. From 1924 to 1935 it was housed in two galleries adjoining the former Imperial Institute, South Kensington. On 7 July 1936, the Duke of York, shortly to become King George VI, reopened the museum in its present home on Lambeth Road, South London, formerly the central portion of Bethlem Royal Hospital, or ‘Bedlam’.

With the onset of war in 1939 IWM’s remit was extended to include the Second World War. While a programme of collecting got underway, vulnerable collections were evacuated to stores outside London, and the museum was closed to the public from September 1940 to November 1946. Most of the exhibits survived the war, but a Short Seaplane which had flown at the Battle of Jutland was shattered when a German bomb fell on the Naval Gallery on 31 January 1941. This was just one of more than 40 incendiary hits on the building throughout the war.

The Korean War led to a further redefinition of the IWM’s terms of reference to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces had been involved since 1914. IWM has therefore continued to collect every type of evidence documenting its very broad remit. Its collections are vast and rich, and in addition to its role as a museum, IWM is also a major national art gallery, a national archive of written and audio-visual recourse, and a centre for research.

The distinct Department of Documents was created in the early 1970s with the purpose of acquiring and preserving an extensive collection of British and Commonwealth private papers. The Department also acts as an official place of deposit for large holdings of foreign documents of mainly German origin. This archival material is available for study by members of the public, and is regularly used in books, newspaper articles and television and radio broadcasts concerning the personal experience of warfare since 1914.

The Department of Documents holds an extensive and important collection of primary source material relating to warfare in the twentieth century, largely composed of British private papers and captured German records. The Department’s holdings in relation to film include the papers of Lord Bernstein, the Film Adviser to the Ministry of Information during the Second World War, which consist of official correspondence and reports containing much detail on the production and distribution of films made under their aegis, and the public reaction to them. Also held are a small number of film and television scripts, a few collections of papers of individuals who served with the Film Units of the armed forces, and within the holdings occasional references can also be found in personal diaries and letters to film-going since 1914.

IWM’s collections cover all aspects of twentieth and twenty-first century conflict involving Britain, the Commonwealth and other former empire countries. Created to record the toil and sacrifice of every individual affected by war, the collections include a wide range of material, from film and oral history to works of art, large objects, and personal letters and diaries.IWM is a national repository and is accredited under the Museums Libraries and Archives Accreditation scheme.

During the 1970s and 1980s IWM underwent a period of unprecedented expansion, with the establishment of three new branches – IWM Duxford in 1976, HMS Belfast in 1978 and Churchill War Rooms in 1984. The fifth member of the IWM family, IWM North, opened in Trafford, Greater Manchester, on 5 July 2002.

IWM holds almost 20,000 individual collections of important private papers, principally comprising unpublished diaries, letters and memoirs written primarily by British and Commonwealth servicemen since 1914 and by civilians during the two world wars. We also hold 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. The museum archive manages IWM’s own administrative records, which date back to its foundation in 1917.

IWM's records cover all aspects of the work of IWM, including:

• The development of IWM's Collections
• The planning and design of exhibitions
• The history of the IWM London's building at Lambeth Road
• The acquisition of IWM’s four branches: IWM North, Churchill War Rooms, IWM Duxford and HMS Belfast Press publicity and publications, including past guidebooks General policy, operation and activities.

IWM has published multiple learning resources, which you can find here.

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