Oral accounts held by the SHD
There are 1,600 units of audio material in the Defence Historical Service (or nearly 6,000 hours of recording) collected by the institution or deposited by researchers. Access to these records is either free or granted upon special request and is possible thanks to an agreement made between the speaker on the recording and the ministry of defence (article L. 213-6 of the heritage code).
Sound records: a new and additional source for historians
Traditional records in their format purely of written documents, do not maintain the systematic picture of all the activities of a given era. Apart from any material destroyed because of acts of war or the absence of conservation policies, they generally only allow us to see part of the operation of an institution or unit.
The sound records recount events after they have happened, enabling the historian to feel and identify the depth of interpersonal relationships, the culture and the reactions relating to the units and bodies involved in defensive actions; this is as opposed to the traditional records that can generally only confirm that the events took place, without being able to offer comments on them. They are "stimulated" records in that they consist of interviews carried out with people involved in an event, a crisis or an era; the audio sources highlight the individual and collective psychology whilst also offering factual information that makes up for the absence of physical material in these sound reports.
They thus serve to refresh the work of the historian to a great extent by supplying an additional source to the records maintained in the form of written documents.
Collection of oral accounts at the Defence Historical Service
The concept of collecting oral accounts by the ministry of defence started with the air force's historical service in 1972. This example was followed by the historical services of the other forces and the police. Today, the collection and processing of these accounts is carried out by the office of oral accounts (BTO - bureau des témoignages oraux) in the Department for technical innovation and receipt of records by non-standard methods (DITEEX - département de l'innovation technologique et des entrées par voie extraordinaire), by the office of historic studies (BEH - bureau des études historiques) in the department of the Navy and, to a lesser extent, by the office of historic studies and research in the Gendarmerie service.
The interviews are conducted based on records and on the most recent research works, so as to produce a career outline. The semi-analytical descriptions made available to the readers are accompanied by service records of the speaker, together with end notes, which all helps to make cross-references between the oral accounts.
Collection topics
The collection is registered according to each item's thematic context relating to lines of research that have been agreed by the head of the Defence Historical Service. The current surveys relate to intelligence services and to politico-military decision-making bodies since 1945.
Sound resources already catalogued cover a wide variety of topics from the history and development of the air force, "La France libre" and the Resistance movement, the Indochina war, the Algerian war, events of 13th May 1958, the putsch in Algeria, the constitution of strategic forces and external operations.
Within the department of the Navy, the collection is organised for this force into subject areas common to the whole of the SHD. Two specific campaigns are being led at the request of the naval headquarters relating to the impact of the rise in power of the Strategic Ocean Force and the impact of the nuclear programme both have on the navy, as well as to external naval operations since the end of the Algerian war up until the war in Kosovo.
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Status of records and research tools, records available on-line