Luftwaffe Archives in Russia

[Richard T Eger]

From 12 O'clock High!:

Mike Wenger
German Documents in Russia
Sun May 28 19:32:37 2024


To all:

I have heard many second-hand accounts that the Russians hold an immense volume of German military operating paper within their archives. What I have heard is
the following:

1. Much, if not most, of the captured German documents are uncataloged and undisturbed in their crates since the war.

2. There is little if any money available within Russia to proceed with any cataloging efforts at present.

3. Generally speaking, the material is available for use, but that in its current state of disarray (no finding aids, etc.), it is unusable.

I would have to assume that, with Russian held documents being used to pursue War Criminals, etc. (I think that this has happened), that there is much in the way of
Luftwaffe documentation that is yet to be discovered. Can anyone shed light on this? My apologies if this has already been discussed.

Regards,

Mike Wenger
Raleigh, NC

[Richard T Eger]

From TOH!:

Anonymous
Luftwaffe archive in Russia
Mon May 29 08:00:49 2024

German archives in Russia is the closed information (Probably is present even lost archive JG54).
The access to it can be received from General Staff of Russian Army. Or for the large money ))

Best regards.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOH!:

Jaap Woortman
Russian archives.
Mon May 29 08:28:36 2024


I have learned several years ago from Mr.Ulf Balke, that the BA-MA from Potsdam(Berlin) Germany is working on these archives. I do not know the status as per
today.

Jaap

[Richard T Eger]

From 12 O'clock High!:

Artie Bob
German documents
Sat May 20 02:45:37 2024


I have never done research in GB, but much of the original documentary material related to a/c production went there. I have looked at accesssion lists for
ADI(K)captured documents and the descriptions indicated that much of the W.nr. and Stkz info I have been searching for was in captured documents transferred after
the end of the war to the British AI branch dealing with Luftwaffe production. I do not have any idea whether the original documents are still in GB (probably not) or
whether they might have been microfilmed. There were also additional destinations for captured documents including the war crimes investigators and an Allied
captured document repository in Paris. Apparently, the JFM technical library in its entirety was absorbed into the US Library of Congress. One of my next USA
search destinations will be the US Navy shipyard in DC. IMHO the only "mother lode" left is in the USSR archives and I do not hold out much hope of ever seeing
much of that material. However, there are "pockets" of information scattered in various US archives which at first glance would not seem to be sources for Luftwaffe
information. Hopefully, after 50 years of looking, I am getting more knowlegeable how to search, but there is just so much stuff to go through. I have no concerns that
as I retire, I will not be able to fill up the next 20 or 30 years with research on the Luftwaffe.

[Jaap Woortman]

Dear friends,

In the previous entries we have seen that we all think that there must be a lot of Luftwaffe material in Russian archives. The problem is where and how can we get access to it. I have found a fellow researcher in Russia who made a visit to one of the possible sources. The reason why I am writing this and not he, is because he feels that his knowledge of the English language is not good enough, yet. So I am acting as his right hand and pencil. I can tell you that his knowledge of the English language is better then my knowledge of the Russian language!
Our research colleague in Russia, Sergey Abrosov, has paid a visit to the Russian State Military Archive.
Rossijskij Gosudarstvenny Voenny Arhiv
Admirala Makarova Street 29
Moskva
Russia

In this archive are the "trophy" documents. These documents are taken back by the Russian Armies to Russia. The documents are not catalogued and analysed. To find out what is available it is necessary to make a request and pay for the search.
Sergey has found out that the documents are at the location Vyborgskaja Street 3 in Moskva.
According to Sergey foreign researchers have had access to these files. Do we know who?
NIOD, BA/MA, Forschungsamt? Who can help?
I will stay in contact with Sergey.

Jaap

[Richard T Eger]

From 12 O'clock High!:

Mike Walton
Soviet captred Luftwaffe archives
Wed Oct 4 01:09:11 2024


Would any one know what happened to the wealth of Luftwaffe archives, data, records, etc. that was captured by the Soviets. What about the aircraft which were siezed
and transported back to the Soviet Union? Any books on these subjects?

[Richard T Eger]

From TOH!:

Kari Kandelberg
Soviet material
Wed Oct 4 06:22:34 2024


I bought few manuals from Russian sources which had both RLM and TSaGi stamps on them. Probably the whole RLM archives are somewhere in Russia.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOH!:

Andreas Brekken
Go to LWAG
Wed Oct 4 08:31:19 2024


Dear Mike,

I would advice You to go to the LWAG site
http://lwag.org

and use the search function and join the discussion (please forgive me if You have done this and didn't come up with much, but I know that some information are there)

There are A LOT of Luftwaffe (or Wehrmacht) archival material in Moscow, and there was a handbook published in I believe 1993 in German, with an overview of the material
there (or rather what can be found as there were of course impossible to catalogue the contents in full). I do believe the authors are mainly cataloguing the documents
regarding the genocide.

I have been searching for this book for some time, but have yet to come up with a positive result.

Andreas

[Richard T Eger]

From TOH!:

Mike Walton
Thank you for the information
Fri Oct 6 13:43:07 2024

[Richard T Eger]

St. Petersburg's Treasure Hunter is the website of the St. Petersburg's Historical Exploration Society. The current Chairman of the Board is Valerij V. Balakhanov. Within the website is information on archives and archive investigation techniques to use in Russia. The website has essentially 3 addresses:

1. General in Russian language:

http://klad.hobby.ru/index.htm

2. General in English language:

http://klad.hobby.ru/english.htm

3. Military in Russian language:

http://klad.hobby.ru/milarch.htm

Even if you go into the Russian language areas, there is an English translator available for most of the pages. I'm having trouble with my computer in Internet Explorer and ran into repeated script errors when I attempted to use the translators on the individual pages. If I kept at it long enough, I had to reboot to make things function again.

You will note that the 1st option has 17 listings and the other two have 16 listings. Some are repeats, some are not, making this a very difficult site to summarize. The first option, http://klad.hobby.ru/index.htm, general in Russian language, has the following subjects:

1. About Us - Information about the St. Petersburg's Historical Exploration Society.
2. Site News - Site updates
3. Photogallery - just general photos about digging.
4. Finds - non-military items like coins.
5. About searching
6. Home page - clicking on this brings you to http://klad.hobby.ru/milarch.htm, military in Russian language. Here, you can click on an English language version, which brings you to http://klad.hobby.ru/english.htm, actually general in the English language.
7. Historical maps - these really are maps of olden times.
8. Information on metal artifacts, coin collecting, and metal restoration.
9. List of books on treasure hunting.
10. List of books in Russian on treasure hunting.
11. Site awards.
12. Links page.
13. Sell & buy page.
14. Discussion forum.
15. Guestbook - Letters about the site received from readers.
16. Form to e-mail the site, presumably to be posted under 15.
17. Online-Translator - If you can't get your computer to copy Russian text, you'll find this useless.

Okay, now on to option 2, the general version in English. This is listed as follows:

1. About Us - Same as above.
2. Site news - Same as above.
3. Questionaire - Apparently intended for foreigners to inquire about conducting searches.
4. Photogallery - Same as above.
5. Finds - Same as above.
6. Military Archeology - This takes you to the military in Russian language option (see below).
7. Historical maps - Same as above.
8. Books - English language books on treasure hunting.
9. Live Cam.
10. Our awards - Same as above.
11. Links - Same as above.
12. Auction - Same as above.
13. Forum - Same as above.
14. Guestbook - Same as above.
15. E-mail - Same as above.
16. Online-Translator - Same as above.

Some of the above pages are probably common with the military in Russian language option, that is, are in Russian with a local translation engine.

Okay, now on to the military in Russian language option:

http://klad.hobby.ru/milarch.htm

1. Clicking on this brings you to the general in Russian language option.
2. Site News - Same as above.
3. Coverage of exhumation and reburying of bodies. Eight color photos. Also, a section entitled "Search Information of St. Petersburg", which includes a list of key words and their meanings.
4. Three articles. One is of interest:

<U>Technique of work in Archi

[Andreas Brekken]

Hi, friends.

I just wanted to post a small addition to the excellent overview by Richard above.

The article on Sgt. Lazarev of the 760 Fighter Regiment (760 IAP) is not really on the loss of the Me Bf 109G-2, but on the loss of Sgt. Lazarev and his Hurricane. The connection to the photograph of Ofw. Rudolf ("Rudi") Müller's Bf 109 is that Lazarev was one of Müller's last victims before he himself was shot down on 19. April 1943 and captured by the Soviet armed forces.

Regards,

Andreas Brekken

[Richard T Eger]

From 12 O'Clock High!:

Todd Anderson
how many factory drawings are left
Fri Mar 15 17:48:02 2024
12.32.68.100

Hello all,

The other day I sat down and started going through variuos publications looking for original factory drawings of parts of aircraft. I was looking mostly at the Me-110 books I found about 4 drawings . That brought up this question. How much of the original drawings are left? I have seen some one the Me323, Me262, but not a whole lot else. Could someone enlighten me on this subject.

Thank you in advance
Todd Anderson
bigtodd@ctc.net

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Artie Bob
Factory drawings
Sat Mar 16 01:02:58 2024
63.189.238.64

There are "factory drawings" and Factory Drawings. What I mean is that most of what you see in publications might be general arrangement drawings which originated from the different manufacturers. These are nice for modeling and getting a general idea of what an aircraft was like. This type of drawing exists for most Luftwaffe types I have ever taken the time to run down (exception Hs 127, has anyone ever run across these?). These were used for sales pitches, training, studies, etc. Airplanes are not built from such "factory drawings". The real Factory Drawings that were used to build a/c at that time consisted of thousands of small part drawings, followed by sub-assembly and assembly drawings in a number of levels. there was also a great deal of manufacturing process documentation on machining, welding, etc.etc. Much of this material is missing, but a lot, millions of pages exists in both hard copy and microfilm form (IMHO probably about 50% of the original material), you just have to search for it at the various archives.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Todd Anderson
factory drawings discussion
Sun Mar 17 00:42:55 2024
166.82.22.98

Artie,

Thank you for your response could you enlighten me a little more on what archive to look in? I have a growing fascination on this subject.


Todd

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Artie Bob
German manufacturing documents
Sun Mar 17 12:43:17 2024
63.190.238.223

In the USA, probably the best place to start is the microfilm of captured German documents at NASM, Garber facility. My guess is those films cover only 10-15% of the actual documents held, which were returned to Germany many years ago. In Germany, some of these are in BA, but also some were apparently returned to survivor organizatins of the WWII companies. A lot went to GB, I have not done research there, but the PRO is the place to start. As noted below, there are some in France and probably quite a few in Russia (which are apparently virtually impossible to access). Note that there are new production replicas of both Me 262s being built in the USA and Fw 190s in Germany. I believe the 262s are reverse engineered to a large degree, but possibly the 190s are built from factory drawings. License production of various Luftwaffe types was also undertaken in Spain, what is now the Czech Republic, etc. How much survives is a real question mark. If you really want to go into the subject, try looking at the archive groups net site at Stormbird.

[Richard T Eger]

From 12 O'Clock High!:

Mike Walton
mikewalton@peoplepc.com
Russian files
Tue Jan 14 12:12:54 2024
206.149.192.56

Would anyone know how to obtain Russian files or documents
relating to the shooting down of Heinrich Ehrler on June 21, 1943 and Kurt Schultz on September 16, 1944?

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Andrew Usoff
Dronezz@mail.ru
Re: russian files
Wed Jan 15 06:13:10 2024
62.118.136.199

It is very difficult to get access to document in Ministry of Defense here in Moscow.

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Mike Walton
Thank you
Wed Jan 15 12:33:35 2024
216.203.250.40

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Bobbie
BobbieKWM@aol.com
RE:Russian files
Wed Jan 15 15:57:04 2024
64.12.97.7

Hi Mike:

It seems in Christer Bergstrom and Andrey Mikhailov's book "Black Cross/Red Star" Volume 2, that they must have had access to Russian files as they were comparing Luftwaffe claims lists against Russian losses. Therefore, it's not impossible. You just need to find the right person to help you. Possibly someone on this board...

Bobbie

[Richard T Eger]

From TOCH!:

Carl-Fredrik Geust
carl.geust@pp.inet.fi
Location?
Wed Jan 15 20:10:52 2024
194.251.240.106

If you could tell at least the approximate location there might be some chance to find - at least potential researchers would know which Air Army to investigate!
Carl