Harry Crerar Collection Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston

[Richard T Eger]

After receiving Larry's reply, I forwarded our correspondence to Chris Madsen for futher input:

"From: Richard Eger
To: sian.madsen@sympatico.ca
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2024 8:37 AM
Subject: Fw: Harry Crerar Collection Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston

Dear Chris,

I'm not fully cognizant of all of the German reports myself, so I asked Larry deZeng, who is quite knowledgeable in these matters, for assistance in telling me just what it was that you were describing in the Crerar Collection. This he has done, but he has also raised a voice of interest into what else might be within the collection of Luftwaffe interest. For instance, there are still major holes in the knowledge base out there, perhaps the classic being the missing Luftwaffe loss records for 1944.

One of the purposes of the LWAG is to be able to network amongst interested parties around the world to ferret out records that would not be of general knowledge. Your mention of the L.Dv and Merkblatt in the Crerar Collection is an excellent example. It does come as a bit of a surprise, quite frankly, that there are such records in Canada but, then again, we were also surprised by the breadth of holdings at the Australian War Memorial.

Anyway, any further help that you can offer would be most appreciated.

Warmest regards,
Richard"

Chris replied with the following information:

"From: sian madsen
To: Richard Eger
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2024 12:45 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: Harry Crerar Collection Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston

Richard,
I mostly use the manuals and regulations (it is just more convenient than going down to College Park), but there are also a large number of boxes containing file records in the Crerar Collection. Of these, I have only glanced through a couple boxes and most of the records seem to come from several Heer (Army) training establishments. In regards to the Luftwaffe, the collection seems particularly strong on technical manuals, everything from planes, flak guns, to engines. There is a good representation of Kriegsmarine manuals, which seemed to come from various headquarters in the Wilhelmshaven and Cuxhaven area. As you know, the Wehrmacht had a uniform code of military justice, so the manuals are essentially the same across the services, just with different numbers. My main field of interest is in military law.

Professor Joel Sokolsky, the Dean of Arts, has long term plans, I believe, to have the Crerar Collection catalogued. Of course, they want someone to work for cheap, possess the requisite language skills, and have some archival knowledge. I think they should just put out a Request for Proposal to have the entire collection catalogued and digitized and give the job to the best bid.

Thanks,
Chris Madsen"

Passing this information on to Larry, he had this further to add:

"From: Hldeziv@aol.com
To: egerrt@dmv.com
Sent: Thursday, April 24, 2024 8:11 AM
Subject: Re: Fw: Fw: Harry Crerar Collection Royal Military College of Canada, Kingston

Dear Richard -

Many thanks for the Chris Madsen update.

The EOW agreement was for the Brits to keep the Luftwaffe operational and administrative documents while the Yanks got the technical material. Anything it duplicated, i.s. regulations, manuals and the like, was then given to the Commonwealth participants, mainly Canada, Australia and South Africa. So by agreement, their collections are small and largely duplicate in part what was here and in the U.K. However, this does not preclude the possibility that each country may also have some original documents that got buried in boxes along the way and may just now be coming to light. Material scooped up at an Army (Heer) training school would be a good example.

Best,

Larry"

Thanks, Chris and Larry, for your further enlightenment.

Regards,
Richard