Notebooks, correspondence with publishers, and research material relating to publications and translation work undertaken by Saunders, circa 1949-1967. Also papers relating to the Admiralty Historical Section and Foreign Documents Section, copies of official photographs, German maps and book reviews. The subjects cover German and Italian wartime organisation and personalities, Hitler's admirals and generals, the Nurnberg war crime trials, the Dunkirk evacuation, German Naval Archives and the Soviet Navy. The printed material includes a set of 'Fuehrer Conferences on Matters Dealing with the German Navy' from 1939-1945, translated and published by the US Navy Department. Please contact archive staff for more information about ordering from this collection.

Administrative / biographical background
Saunders was born in Germany, during the period when his father the journalist George Saunders (1859-1922) worked as the Berlin correspondent for British newspapers. He entered the Navy in 1909. During the Second World War he worked for the Naval Intelligence Division at the Admiralty. He then worked for the Historial Section and Foreign Document Section. He became well-known among historians for his knowledge of the German Naval Archives captured at the end of the war, also his translations of German accounts such as the memoirs of the naval officer Friedrich Ruge and the story of the commerce raider ATLANTIS. His own works included editorship of 'The Soviet Navy' published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson in 1958, contributions to 'Purnell's History of the Second World War' first published in 1966, plus papers in the Journal of the United Service Institution.