Bundesarchiv: return of material captured by the U.S.

[Richard T Eger]

From 12 O'Clock High!:

Marko Jeras
NARA microfilm guides...
Wed Apr 9 22:56:34 2003
193.198.131.119

I have seen today NARA guides to microfilmed German records. The guide no.1 dates back to 1959. and the last one I saw, no.84, dates 1981.

My question is: is that all? No more material microfimed from 1981. till now?

Hope somebody might have an answer. Looking forward to hear from you. Thanks and all the best,

Marko

P.S. are this guides available online perhaps?

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Richard T. Eger
NARA Microfilm Guides & catalogs in general
Thu Apr 10 05:11:08 2003
162.33.247.185

Dear Marko,

I'm assuming what you are refering to are the extensive guides prepared of captured German documentation from WW II. These are quite voluminous and I seriously doubt that they have been put on-line. Whether NARA finally finished creating them in 1981 or simply ran out of money and/or interest, I can't say.

Microfilming of the main body of documents was completed and the documents returned to Germany by the early 60's, but cataloging had to play catch-up. Thus, cataloging could have continued until 1981.

Some time back we had several discussions (I was the instigator!!) of "missing" records "lost" in various archives, simply having fallen in the crack with no program to follow up on getting them cataloged or, at best, a minimal program, possibly utilizing volunteers, as at the NASM's Garber archives.

The official guides, though, I am pretty sure pertain to the program initiated at the end of WW II to microfilm the vast amount of material brought back from Europe. Most of the microfilming was done in the old torpedo factory in Alexandria, VA, which now houses an excellent artists center. It was a rather odd conglomeration of government and private resources who pushed strongly to have this done and, if it weren't for their efforts, sometimes seeming to be viewed as of the lowest priority to the non-academic world, we wouldn't have the excellent records we have today. Interestingly, as the Korean War broke out, support for the program had reached a rather low ebb, but all of a sudden the military thought there might be something useful in aiding the war effort in those old German records, so more resources were made available. And, in the early to mid-fifties, the German government was pushing for the return of their materials. The archivists recognized that they faced a time-line and worked furiously to microfilm as much as possible, but still had to make some hard choices as to what to skip and what to microfilm. As I said, by the early 60's, IIRC, most of the material had been returned to Germany and, as I said, the microfilming got ahead of the cataloging.

Material was coming in from different sources and it didn't all funnel through Alexandria. For instance, the Air Force retained the air technical material, which was independently microfilmed, mostly at Wright Field. This is cataloged in the "Desk Catalog of Captured German and Japanese Air Technical Documents". Some of it was classified. It's home stayed within the military until about the 70's, at which point it was offered to and gratefully accepted by the NASM. Ironically, the multi-volume catalog itself was available at various universites before the microfilms were released to the NASM. Thus, a few hardy souls investigated what was in this treasure trove of technical material, but had to await the day that the material actually became available.

An oddity that I can't explain is that the Library of Congress obtained access to many of these microfilmed documents long before the official set being held by the military was released for public viewing. And, it wasn't just a microfilm of another copy, but the very same microfilming, as can be seen by the same reel and frame numbers.

Various university libraries and military offices/archives probably got unique collections of their own which likely didn't fall into either of the two major catalogings that I have mentioned. "Stuff" is just there, waiting to be discovered. And, "stuff" moves. For instance, I recently discovered that part of the Wright/McCook Field Photo Collection of over 200,000 photos resides only partly cataloged at NASM Garber. Still to surface are all the translations of captured German air technical reports and all the evaluation reports of captured German air technical equipment.

But, getting back to catalogs and their usefulness to researchers, cataloging is only as good as the cataloger and the degree of detail of the cataloging. Thus, a group of very interesting documents can be "hidden in plain sight" with a vanilla general description, only to be uncovered by literally going into the box and looking at each document one at a time. For instance, NARA II has a very nice collection of CIOS reports on a wealth of subjects. CIOS was the key scientific investigative organization sent to Europe to summarize German industry and military subjects. The reports are fairly comprehensive, but, from what I can tell, don't go in much for counting airplanes or recording Werknummers. But, I digress. The way these are cataloged is that they will be listed as a box range. Even when you get the boxes, each will say something like CIOS reports XXI-52 to XXII-3. If you don't know what they are, you simply have to look.

Another problem with catalogers is that they may not be cognizant of what they are cataloging, so you get a best try effort that may miss the mark broadly. Or, they may look at the first page of the "document", flip through a few pages, translate the title, and make a stab at what lies within. What they may not realize is that there may be several actual documents and that they have only summarized the first, leaving the balance uncataloged.

That said, what these catalogs probably do is present a very detailed summary, but not a page by page assessment, especially when you have a stack of reports running only a page or two in length and are trying to catalog them as a group. Thus, in going through one reel on Rechlin last fall, I ran across an excellent 1-page Umbau listing, providing a beautiful example of what Umbau really was all about. I sincerely doubt that that one page was mentioned in the catalogs in question.

Sorry, I got carried away...

Regards,
Richard

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Dénes Bernád
Processing of captured German documents... in Germany?
Thu Apr 10 21:50:01 2003
204.101.53.233

Thank you, Richard, for the comprehensive overview of how captured German documents were (incompletely) processed,i.e. microfilmed and catalogued, in the USA.
You mentioned that (most) captured documents were returned to Germany in the early 1960s. I am wondering if they were (this time properly and completely) processed in Germany in the past 40 years? Certainly, it's a lot of time and knowing the Germans' precision (but sometimes slow pace), I would hope that these wartime documents now have a more comprehensive guide available.
Any details on this issue?

Dénes

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Andreas Brekken
BAMA, microfilming etc
Fri Apr 11 11:25:33 2003
80.213.11.186

Hi, guys.

I haven't prepared a lengthy answer, and others might be better infomed, but...

The returned material has been catalogued by the Bundesarchiv Militärarchiv. There is a division between Luftwaffe (the RL series), Marine (the RM series) and the Heer (RH series) etc etc.

The complete finding aids as far as I know are still the printed Findbücher located in the two bookshelfs to the left of the door into the visitors reading room.

However ( Tarmtamtamtamtamtamtam!!!! (I should have been able to insert an audio file of a drum roll here) the good people at the Bundesarchiv has made the Findbücher available on the internet!!

Just go to www.bundesarchiv.de

They haven't yet (and I do not know if they will do) enclosed the reference numbers for each individual file which would be able to fin in the printed Findbücher, and some of the fil names are misleading or incomplete. A solution could be that the interested party would find the name of the F

But it is a great start!

Parts of the documents have been microfilmed. It is my understanding from contact with the people at the BAMA that this is done following a priority list.

It was my understanding that the "old stuff" from this timeframe is quite low on this list of priorities, due to a number of factors, one of them being that they did receive a considerable amount of archive material when the DDR and BDR was united.

Regards,
Andreas

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Marko Jeras
Dear Andreas, thank you for that info on BA! :-) (nm)
Fri Apr 11 22:20:27 2003
193.198.130.216

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Richard T. Eger
Errata please
Sat Apr 12 04:20:18 2003
162.33.234.199

Dear Andreas,

That is good news. Larry deZeng had told me recently that the Findbücher could only be accessed by going to the BA/MA, i.e., you couldn't buy your own private set. Now you say they are available on the net. Wonderful!

In your message you had one paragraph that had apparently 3 incomplete words:


"They haven't yet (and I do not know if they will do) enclosed the reference numbers for each individual file which would be able to fin in the printed Findbücher, and some of the fil names are misleading or incomplete. A solution could be that the interested party would find the name of the F"

Please tell us what you meant to say for fin, fil, and F.

Thanks.

Regards,
Richard

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Andreas Brekken
Comment and errata.
Mon Apr 14 10:47:42 2003
80.213.11.186

Hi!

Sticky fingers... or to little time and to many keys to press...

fin = find

fil = file

F = Findbuch and could order a copy of this.

Hope it is a bit easier to understand now.

I disagree with mr. DeZeng that what the people at Bundesarchiv has done is a bad thing. I still would say that it is a good start. Up until now NONE of this information has been available unless You went to Freiburg or bought a book on the issue. You will now at least be able to get an overview of the contents in the different parts of the RL document structure, and in fact be able to plan an approach for requesting material from the archive.

I cannot quite understand the critisism from mr. DeZeng, and by using the navigation from the link in the introductary text were able to locate the introductory text and descriptions for the following:

RL 1 (Reichsminister der Luftfahrt und Oberbefehlshaber der Luftwaffe)
RL 2 I (Chef des Generalstabes)
RL 2 II (Luftwaffenführungsstab)
RL 2 III (Generalquartiermeister)
RL 2 IV (Kriegswissenschaftliche Abteilung des Generalstabs der Luftwaffe)
RL 2 V (Generalnachrichtenführer)
RL 2 VI (Luftwaffenführungsstab Nord und Süd)
RL 3 (Generalluftzeugmeister)
Rl 4 (Chef des Ausbildungswesens/Chef der Fliegerausbildung mit Luftwaffeninspektionen und Waffengeneralen)
RL 5 (Chef der Personellen Rüstung und NS-Führung)
RL 6 (Chef der Luftfahrt)
RL 7 (Truppenführungsstäbe Gesamtluftwaffe)
RL 8 (Truppenführungsstäbe Fliegertruppe)
RL 9 (Befehlshaber und Missionen in besetzten und verbündeten Staaten)
RL 10 (Verbände und Einheiten der Fliegertruppe/Fliegende Verbände)
RL 11 (Truppenführungsstäbe der Flakartillerie)
RL 12 (Verbände und Einheiten der Flakartillerie)
RL 13 (Verbände und Einheiten der Luftschutztruppe)
RL 14 (Verbände und Einheiten der Luftnachrichtentruppe)
RL 15 (Verbände und Einheiten der Luftwaffenpropagandatruppe)
RL 16 ()
RL 17 (Dienststellen und Einheiten der Ausbildungs-und Ersatzorganisation)
RL 18 (Verbindungsstellen der Luftwaffe)
RL 19 (Luftkreis- und Luftgaukommandos, Luftgaustäbe)
RL 20 (Flughafenbereichskommandos)
RL 21 (Fliegerhorstkommandanturen und Flugplatzkommandos)
RL 22 (Fliegertechnische Bodendienste/ technische Dienste)
RL 23 (Luftwaffenbautruppen, Wach- und Landesschützeneinheiten sowie Kriegsgefangenenlager der Luftwaffe)
RL 24 (Luftzeuggruppen)
RL 25 (Nachschubdienste der Luftwaffe)
RL 26 (Sanitätstruppe und -einrichtungen der Luftwaffe)
RL 27 (Verwaltungsdienststellen der Luftwaffe)
RL 28 (Wetterdienste der Luftwaffe)
RL 29 (Seenotdienststellen und -einheiten der Luftwaffe)
RL 30 (Sonderstäbe der Luftwaffe)
RL 31 (Gefechtsverbände der Luftwaffe)
RL 32 (Fallschirmpanzerkorps "Hermann Göring")
RL 33 (Fallschirmtruppe)
RL 34 (Luftwaffenfeldverbände/ Erdkampftruppe)
RL 35 (Legion Condor)
RL 36 (Dienststellen für technische Erprobungen der Luftwaffe)
RL 37 ()
RL 38 (Verbindungsstellen des Generalluftzeugmeisters)
RL 39 (Forschungsinstitute der Luftwaffe)
RL 40 (Reichsamt für Wetterdienst)
RL 41 (Reichsluftschutzbund)

There are also some additional Map Groups.

I cannot locate info about RL 16 and RL 37, and suspect they are unused, as I haven't made notes from them from any of my visits to BAMA.

From reading user manuals for equipment ment for the US market I do know that You need specific instructions not to put Your pets into a microwave, or eat the plastic parts used to lock the movement of a scanner unit... In my opinion most people will be able to get at least some information on where to go next from the new Bundesarchiv Beständeübersicht - ONLINE (partly ment as a joke....!! {Explanation to avoid grumpy replies from offended US citizens})

And as I tried to say in the first message - if You find something of interest in the general description of one of the above collection of files (RL 1, RL 2 etc etc), the next step would be to order a copy of the Findbuch itself. My suspicion is also that these will be found online in the not so distant future, as they are now made in a computer format and not written up on a typewriter.

One last piece of advice - the Findbücher are not the truth and nothing but the truth! They give a VERY general and limited desription of the full files, which can be voluminous.

Regards, and keep up the good work Richard,
Andreas

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Richard T. Eger
Re.: Availability of BA/MA Findbücher
Mon Apr 14 13:50:36 2003
162.33.247.109

Dear Andreas,

I've now spent some time on the BA/MA site and have the following observations:

1. The various RL's are described in very general terms and, as you say, you'd actually need to look at a Findbuch to be able to locate documents. Thus, what is online is just an overview.

2. I went through the 21 screens that list the available Findbücher for purchase. None of these appeared to be for the RL Signatur series. Please correct me if I am wrong.

3. It appeared to me that some of the Findbücher were available on microfilm, although it isn't clear whether hard copies were also available where this option was listed. Microfilm indexes would be especially difficult to work with. CD's would make a lot more sense.

4. The best online catalog of the major archives, in my judgment, is that of the PRO.

5. The best online catalog for the RL series is that on LWAG, thanks to the efforts of Jaap Woortman and Andreas.

Comments?

Regards,
Richard

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Andreas Brekken
No comments, You are right. (nm)
Mon Apr 14 13:55:44 2003
80.213.11.186

[Richard T Eger]

In the meantime, as the above sub-thread was in progress, I added the following from TOCH!:

Richard T. Eger
Re.: Availability of BA/MA Findbücher Online
Sun Apr 13 11:38:51 2003
162.33.234.208

Dear Andreas, et al,

Since your story conflicted with that told to me by Larry deZeng, I wrote to him for comment. Larry wrote back:

"Richard -

This was news to me, too, but if you will go to the Bundesarchiv site you will quickly discover that it isn't good news, in fact, it isn't even true.

On the Bundesarchiv Home Page you will find Bestände and Publikations. The first of these will allow you access to the cataloger's or archivist's one-page description of all of the RH, RL, RM, etc., record groups at BA-MA Freiburg. The second of these, Publikations, lists all of the 91 Findbücher that Brekken is talking about. You will discover, if you go through all of the 91 listed, that only around 10 of them concern WW II record groups, and that all of these save one deal with Nazi Party and SS records. The sole exception is a single Findbücher dealing with RH (Reich-Heer) records. There is not one single Findbuch that has been published on the Luftwaffe. When I was at BA-MA in August 1990, 13 years ago, there were around 45 Findbücher for Luftwaffe records. These were as I described them in my recent e-mail to you.

Bottom Line: There are no published Findbücher on Luftwaffe records. Nothing has changed one iota from the e-mail I sent to you.

Best,

Larry"

So, while some Findbücher have now been made available on the Internet, the ones we really want to see haven't. Maybe that will change with time.

Regards,
Richard