On 20 May 1945, the Combined Chiefs of Staff directed the Supreme Allied Commander, Mediterranean, the Supreme Allied Commander, Allied Expeditionary Force, and the Supreme Allied Commander, Southeast Asia Command, to take steps to insure that, prior to or upon the inactivation of their respective headquarters, sets of the records of a combined nature maintained by those headquarters would be available for ultimate release to the Governments of the United Kingdom and the United States. This directive applied "to the records of the various staff sections and subdivisions of the combined theater headquarters, to the various boards and commissions controlled by such headquarters, and to the combined air, ground, and naval headquarters immediately there under." AFHQ, like SHAEF, proposed to provide duplicate sets of its records by means of microphotography, and this proposal was approved by Combined Chiefs of Staff on 31 July 1945. To undertake the project, AFHQ established its Allied Force Records Administration, which thereafter operated to survey, collect, arrange, catalogue, microfilm, and ship to authorized custodians all of the combined British-American records of the Mediterranean Theater of Operations, in so far as they were in existence or could be accessioned. The present Guide endeavors to describe all such records. Each article treats of a "record group," a term denoting all of the files created by or received from a particular installation or a major subdivision of an installation. In order that this compilation may be of the greatest possible use to agencies of the Governments of both the United Kingdom and the Unites States, whether they possess the original records or microcopies, the date provided, for each "record group," include indications of: the job number or numbers, as assigned by Allied Force Microfilming and Records Depot; the quantity, in terms of linear feet; the date coverage; catalogue reference, pointing to the catalogue indicator under which the records described are listed in detail- complete sets of the Catalogue, which was prepared for British historical purposes by Allied Force Records Administration and the Archives Division of Allied Commission Italy, are available at Historical Section of British Cabinet Office and at Departmental Records Branch (Historical Records Section), AGO, Department of the Army; the microfilm reel numbers, which identify microcopies produced by Allied Force Records Administration- with the exception of those of Allied Military Government, Allied Commission Italy, Allied Screening Commission of AFHQ, and Rome Area Allied Command (see details in the appropriate articles of this Guide), all available combined records of the Theater were microfilmed, and complete microcopies are now available in Historical Section of British Cabinet Office, for records retired to the United States, and in Departmental Records Branch (Historical Records Section), AGO, Department of the Army, for records retired to the United Kingdom; and the custodian of the original records, as authorized by Combined Chiefs of Staff, is shown for each record group. Although this Guide is not provided with an index, its general arrangement is such that it may be used to advantage by any searcher possessing some knowledge of the mission and organization of Allied Force Headquarters and its subordinate Allied commands. Each part is supplied with a special preface. The names of all offices whose records are described in separate articles may be found in the table of contents. Part I describes the records of Allied Force Headquarters; part II the records of Headquarters Allied Armies in Italy (Fifteenth Army Group) and other Allied Ground Force organizations; part III the records of Mediterranean Allied Air Forces Headquarters and other organizations of the Allied Air Command; part IV the records of the Allied Naval Command; part V the records of Allied liaison in the Balkans; part VI Allied records of local headquarters in Rome and Florence; and part VII the records of Allied Military Government and the Allied Commission Italy, and those pertaining to other Allied Control Commissions. An incidental purpose of this Guide is to provide information to enable the custodians of the original records and microcopies to bring these materials into a more logical arrangement, and to that end the compiler has pointed to errors in arrangement or identification in so far as he is aware of them. With few exceptions, the record groups described herein were collected, arranged, catalogued, microfilmed, and even shipped to final custodians in installments. Under conditions such as have obtained in a Theater of Operations, the work could not have been accomplished in any other way.

016.94054 M965a Approved for public release; distribution is unlimited.