Captured German military records online: "germandocsinrussia.org"

[Mori]

I've looked into the newly released 12474-Korps fund more deeply. I've checked about half of it, up to XXIII.AK.

I'm surprised that the vast majority of the entries are about Poland 1939 or France 1940, and that items on the German-USSR war are relatively few (one noticeable exception being XXIII.AK).

It makes me wonder...
... what warehouse did the Russians get so much "pre-war" material from?
... how could this storage facility only pile up documents up to mid-41

I saw that many of the documents are damaged by fire. It may be that the place got on fire and that only one area - where the 1938-40 boxes happened to be - could be saved. But that's pure hypothesis.

Another possibility is that the 1941-45 Korps archives are somewhere else and not in the 12474 fund.

Your thoughts?

[Piet Duits]

I sure wish you are correct. And that those missing boxes will surface too once. In our lifetime.

[histan]

Hi Mori

The fire was in the German archive and seems to have had a major impact on documents relating to the Polish Campaign - many documents on the NARA rolls show the same fire damage. Documents from 1941 onward seem to have not been

With regard to the Russian campaign, they seem to have published material not contained on the NARA rolls - such as KTB for V AK and L AK and a report on XXXXIX AK in the Crimea. These provide valuable additional material.

They do, however, seem obsessed with maps!

Regards

John

[Piet Duits]

Yes indeed, and Ic material. In other words, things about themselves...

[Reigo2]

The 12474-Korps contains also material for example from Kurland 1944-1945. Therefore it seems likely that everything related to Corps are included in 12474 and there is no another series containing such materials.

The description for 12474 says about the origin of the materials: Ein Großteil der Akten aus diesem Findbuch stammt aus den Trümmern des Heeresarchivs in Potsdam, wo sie nach Kriegsende von sowjetischen Einheiten geborgen und schließlich nach Moskau geschafft wurden.

My hypothesis is that the Heer material in fund 500 is composed largely from two sources: the remains of Potsdam archive and Courland capitulation. Unfortunately for my research (Estonia February 1944-September 1944) the units which capitulated in Courland in 1945 probably sent their pre October 1944 materials earlier to the archives where they were mostly destroied.

[Mori]

My hypothesis is that the Heer material in fund 500 is composed largely from two sources: the remains of Potsdam archive and Courland capitulation. Unfortunately for my research (Estonia February 1944-September 1944) the units which capitulated in Courland in 1945 probably sent their pre October 1944 materials earlier to the archives where they were mostly destroied.

Yes, I reach the same conclusion:
- Postdam archive with material almost exclusively on pre-Barbarossa
- whatever was captured on the field at the end of the war : Courland, some stuff about the units in Norway, etc. This part you can't find at NARA or BAMA.

There is very little for the time in between.

I'll see whether I have time to quantify that a bit more.

[Mori]

Just dedicated a little time comparing the 12474 files with the T314 from NARA. It seems the series are more complementary than redundant:

- NARA hasn't copied much of the pre-war documents. So the 12474 documents up to summer 1939 are not in NARA (e.g., the pre-war Kriegspiel in items 20 and 21)

- NARA often has full, detailed KTB. It seems you hardly ever get this in 12474, except for some units like 5.AK, 23.AK or 26.AK. The 1939-1940 data from 12474 look therefore different from what the NARA KTBs.
(Unfortunately, I cannot be 100% certain as I lack the corresponding NARA rolls for the items I checked - I'm not much into the Poland campaign - so this comes from reading the NARA catalog and getting a sense of what the material is from title and number of pages).

- Many of the entries in 12474 are single maps. Probably more than 150 entries (ca. 25%). Even if they are at NARA, getting color copies is way better than black & white microfilms. That said, isolated maps are of very limited value. Maps only become interesting for the scholar when one gets series covering several days or several weeks. 12474 offers just this for 5.AK (items 94-103), 10.AK (174-180), 23.AK (distributed between 327 and 384), 26.AK (400-437) and maybe more.

- and like was said before, some of the late war documents are truly original

[Piet Duits]

The NARA does not have the KTB Nr. 27-31 from the XXIII. Armeekorps.
I am a very happy man with these new items.

[Jan-Hendrik]

Indeed!

Jan-Hendrik