Quote:
Originally Posted by Nick Beale
The reels were certainly in Allied hands because the Imperial War Museum put them on microfilm. I understand that the originals were returned to Germany in the 1060s. Larry de Zeng will know the exact date, I’m sure.
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Can't add much, but I do know that in the late forties when the "Karlsruhe Collection" authors were slaving away on their histories, they had to be taken by air to the A.I.12 (Post-Hostilities)/Air Ministry Library on Monck Street in London to see and do research in the captured German documents, including the Gen.Qu.(6.Abt.) Luftwaffen-Verlustmeldungen. They had Allied chaperones and could only visit for a few weeks at a time before returning to Germany.
These loss records were never in the U.S. They were part of the Luftwaffe administrative and selected operational records that remained in the U.K. in the custody of the Air Historical Branch - some being microfilmed - before being returned to Germany between c. 1960 and 1972. For those interested in the nitty-gritty details, see:
ECKERT, Astrid M.
The Struggle for the Files: The Western Allies and the Return of German Archives after the Second World War. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013. ISBN: 978-1-107-62920-2.
L.