Making available an archive of NVMs and research materials wanted on the Polish Campaign.

[Larry Hickey]

Hello,

As many of you know if you've followed this message board, last August I acquired the huge Henrich Weiss achive, which was compiled over some 40 years prior to his death a few years ago. Among this collection were about 3500 NVMs for personnel/crew losses for bombers, Lehr, Stuka, Aufklar, ErprG210, Wekusta, transport and Seenotflug units. These are mostly during 1940, but a few from 1939, a fairly large number from 1941, and even a very few SNFK losses all the way up to 1944. These were copied beginning during the late 1970s at the WASt by a group of German researchers who were allowed to rent a photocopy machine and bring it into the WASt to make copies. It appears unlikely that such a project would be allowed today. I also have about 90 more from JG2 and JG26, primarily from 1941, and most of the ZG losses in 1940, the latter contributed by a member of our working group, bringing the total to close to 4000 NVMs. These are now well organized and we have compiled a full index of these by unit, date and pilot's name, so that we can locate specific files, or even determine if we have them, fairly efficiently.

I'm trying to figure out how to make this collection available to the serious
Luftwaffe researcher community, without a) pissing off the WASt, which has
largely shut down access to these research documents except to family members, and b) creating a huge workload and expense for myself and my associated members of the "Eagles over Europe Working Group" (EOE WG), who are maintaining this collection for me in Europe (I live in the USA). I want to make it clear that I'm NOT selling these and will take NO compensation for making copies of these available. This would be strictly a gratis service to the research community. Moreover, if I make these available, I feel that they will have to be censored to the current standards now used by the WASt, to remove next of kin addresses, etc. to protect the privacy of the families of the deceased. In the USA, copies of MACRs (Missing Aircrew Reports) are readily available as public records to anyone, but I want to be sensitive to the differing standards of the German Government and public.

As members of the research community, I'm seeking your suggestions of how this might best be done. I'm concerned that this could take a lot of time and a fair amount of expense making copies and shipping these to people all over the world. Yet, I don't want to see the serious research community denied access to such an important research tool. This collection is only a small piece of the full NVM collection at WASt, but having these available may greatly assist certain researchers with their projects. So, I'm seeking your comments and suggestions about how to do this. Do not respond and ask for copies, as I'm only seeking advice on how this might best be done. I am not yet ready to actually start this. This must be done with lots of forethought and planning or it could become a nightmare for me and my associates, and a greater expense than I'm willing to bear.

A second request that some of you may be able to help me with: I'm looking for copies of the NVMs for all Luftwaffe losses during the Polish Campaign of Sept. 1939 for a very important research project on that subject. We have only a few at present. I'm also looking for copies of documentary material on Luftwaffe operations there. If anyone has a collection of materials on that subject, other than Marius Emmerling, who is already working with our group, I would like to hear about it. This would include Flugbuchs, KTBs, mission reports, unit records, diaries, personal accounts, aircrew interview transcriptions and other such materials.

I look forward to your thoughts on both of these issues.