Richard T Eger
06-08-2003, 07:54 PM
Larry deZeng, one of the most knowledgeable persons I know regarding German records and organizations in WW II, wrote to me on 8 Jun. 2003 with the following information:
"While trawling through some of my 50 boxes of documents and photocopies yesterday, I discovered a very interesting article that is so germane to the entire subject of Luftwaffe research that I spent an hour or two translating the important section and creating a Word document out of it. It really needs to be posted on LWAG because it is the definitive story on what happened to the Luftwaffe's documents at the end of the war and why so little survived. Luftwaffe research today can only proceed after the researcher has read and understood the contents of this article. I think you will agree after reading it. It will also put to rest many conflicting myths and rumors that evolved on this subject over the past 55+ years.
If you are interested, let me know and I'll forward it to you as an e-mail attachment."
He subsequently commented on the difficulty of the translation and the obsurity of the source document:
"Very, very few of the non-German researchers out there would be able to read this if it wasn't translated as the German is very archaic and convoluted. The German researchers, on the other hand, would not know how to obtain the 1977 book that the article was published in, since it's a periodic professional anthology aimed at professional archivists. Very obscure!"
Obviously, my answer was yes, we wanted it for LWAG. The article can be read as a .pdf file at:
http://www.lwag.org/reference/fla001.pdf
Thank you Larry for this very valuable article. It substantiates the oft-told tale that only about 3% of the Luftwaffe's records survived the war. It is remarkable that "so many have done so much with so little." Now, where have I heard that before?
Regards,
Richard
"While trawling through some of my 50 boxes of documents and photocopies yesterday, I discovered a very interesting article that is so germane to the entire subject of Luftwaffe research that I spent an hour or two translating the important section and creating a Word document out of it. It really needs to be posted on LWAG because it is the definitive story on what happened to the Luftwaffe's documents at the end of the war and why so little survived. Luftwaffe research today can only proceed after the researcher has read and understood the contents of this article. I think you will agree after reading it. It will also put to rest many conflicting myths and rumors that evolved on this subject over the past 55+ years.
If you are interested, let me know and I'll forward it to you as an e-mail attachment."
He subsequently commented on the difficulty of the translation and the obsurity of the source document:
"Very, very few of the non-German researchers out there would be able to read this if it wasn't translated as the German is very archaic and convoluted. The German researchers, on the other hand, would not know how to obtain the 1977 book that the article was published in, since it's a periodic professional anthology aimed at professional archivists. Very obscure!"
Obviously, my answer was yes, we wanted it for LWAG. The article can be read as a .pdf file at:
http://www.lwag.org/reference/fla001.pdf
Thank you Larry for this very valuable article. It substantiates the oft-told tale that only about 3% of the Luftwaffe's records survived the war. It is remarkable that "so many have done so much with so little." Now, where have I heard that before?
Regards,
Richard