Hi EdWest2,
Quote:
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I will not bore anyone with lengthy examples, but of all the documents that were dutifully destroyed, a great number were not. Documents from the Foreign Office, the SS and other documents. And I have reason to believe that while paper documents were destroyed by the ton, that copies were put on microfilm for easy transport out of the country at the end of the war, perhaps multiple copies.
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I think this is a fair statement and helpful for the younger fellas just beginning to ponder the question of what happened to certain Luftwaffe documents that seem to have gone missing before or right after the war ended, but for us "old timers" who have been on the trail of these documents for 40 years and longer, your statement is old and well-known.
I'm not going to write a dissertation here, but the Luftwaffen-Archiv in Potsdam was turned into a roaring, raging, all engulfing fire in August 1944 by Allied bombers. The destruction of archived Luftwaffe files was enormous. Immediately thereafter, Genst.d.Lw. issued orders to all departments and branches to start microfilming their records. You can read more about this here:
“Die Schließung von Überlieferungslücken am Beispiel des Schriftgutes der Luftwaffe 1933-1945” (“The Closing of Gaps in Returned Collections Using the Documentation of the Luftwaffe 1933-1945 as an Example”)
Von Wulf-Dietrich Noack
(Translated by: Henry L. deZeng IV)
Source: this is an article appearing in the following anthology: Heinz Boberach and Hans Booms (eds.),
Aus der Arbeit des Bundesarchives: Beiträge zum Archivwesen, zur Quellenkunde und Zeitgeschichte, Schriften des Bundesarchivs Nr. 25, Boppard am Rhein: Harald Boldt Verlag, 1977. ISBN 3 7646 1690 3. Wulf-Dietrich Noack was born in 1914 and in 1977 held the rank of Archivoberrat (senior archive official) in the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv, Freiburg, where he had been on the staff since 1966.
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Note: this translation appears on the LWAG (Luftwaffe Archives Group) web site under Archives in Germany – General Information at the following URL:
http://www.lwag.org/reference/fla001.pdf. It can also be reached via Advanced Search, “deZeng” - scroll through 3 pages of articles and “The Fate of the Luftwaffe Archives at the End of World War Two” pops up.]
Some of the microfilms survived the war. For example, the Bundesarchiv-Militaerarchiv in Freiburg holds 492 reels of 16mm microfilm averaging 2,200 frames per reel containing officer personnel Karteikarten und Akten filmed by LPA during the final 6 months for the war. Unfortunately, due to sub-standard acetone, oxide and other chemicals used in making the film, exposure to moisture and temperature variances for several years while stored in a mine right after the war and detrimental handling and storage by the Bundesarchiv after the collection was in their hands, it is today illegible and cannot be restored. There were a number of other microfilm collections but I have not found details about them.
L.