One of the aims of the various research trips I made to IWM Duxford pre-COVID was to get a feel for exactly which of the ‘Speer Catalogue’ documents remained in their files and which had been definitively restituted to Gerrmany. The ‘Speer Catalogue’ was a listing of items which fell under the Foreign Documents (FD) banner. The underlying rational had been that all ‘German State’ material should be returned whilst material relating to individual concerns could be retained as legitimate ‘war booty’. Everything which was returned was microfilmed as part of the Speer microfilms collection and of course huge chunks are now available in RL 3.
Working through these files, I came across a few files which clearly fell into the former category. I guess with as many linear feet of documents as were involved in this process, it was inevitable that some would get missed. Amongst these was FD5562/45 ‘Graphische Darstellung der Flugzeuglieferungen (Soll und Ist). Charts of aircraft deliveries (target and actual), 1940-42’. This turned out to be quite a small file but oddly enough, included was the Beitrag zur Beschaffungsmeldung for December 1944. I photographed the document but with hindsight I probably ought to have scanned it. It is very easy to be blessed with wisdom after the event. Thankfully all relevant details are legible in my photos. I hadn’t appreciated quite how much of a missing link this was. This was recently brought up on TOCH by Nigel Moore -
http://forum.12oclockhigh.net/showpo...7&postcount=14
As those with a keen interest in these things will appreciate the June – November 1944 iterations of this reporting are available in RL 3/3733 (as well as on microfilm T177/42 – downloadable via NARA). The January 1945 iteration can be found in RL 3/1278. Neither of the Freiburg documents have yet been digitised – a job for someone perhaps?
I bundled my images into a PDF and recently offered this to Freiburg. Their stance was to politely refuse this request as I couldn’t offer the original documents. My stance was somewhat different as I believe they could have at the least accepted my offer as a ‘place holder’ given the importance of the information contained therein but there is nothing to be gained by a to and fro.
I have therefore come to a decision to offer this file to researchers. It can be accessed here for seven days only -
https://easytransfer.net/P73xQ2jG/ed...7fed54c6b5f8d0