Captured Records: World War I

When Shawn Woodford sent me that article on the Captured Iraqi Records, it reminded me of a half-dozen examples I had dealt with over the years. This will keep me blogging for a week or more. Let me start a hundred years ago, with World War I.

The United States signed a separate treaty with Germany after the end of World War I. We were not part of the much maligned Versailles Treaty (although we had to come back to Europe to help clean up the mess they made of the peace). As part of that agreement, we required access to the German military archives.

We used this access well. We put together a research team that included Lt. Colonel Walter Kruger. The United States plopped this team of researchers in Germany for a while and carefully copied all the records of German units that the United States faced. This really covered only the last year of a war that lasted over four years (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918). Krueger was in Germany with the team in 1922. This was a pretty significant effort back in the days before Xerox machines, microfilm, scanners, and other such tools.

These records were later saved to the U.S. National Archives. So one can access those records now, and will find the records of U.S. units involved, the German units involved (much of it translated), along with maps and descriptions of the fighting. It is all nicely assembled for researchers. It is a very meticulous and nicely done collection.

Just to add to the importance of this record collection, the German archives in Potsdam were bombed by the RAF in April 1945, destroying most of their World War I records (this raid on 14/15 April: apr45 and also: bundesarchiv). So, one cannot now go back and look up these German records. The only surviving primary source combat records for many German units from World War I is the records in the U.S. Archives copied (translated and typed from the original) done by the U.S. researchers.

Lt. Colonel Krueger was fluent in German because of his family background (he was born in Prussia). During World War II, he rose to be a full general (four-star general) in command of the Sixth Army in the Pacific: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Krueger

This effort sets that standard almost a hundred years ago of what could/should be done with captured records. A later post will discuss the World War II effort.

The Sad Story Of The Captured Iraqi DESERT STORM Documents

 

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Christopher A. Lawrence
Christopher A. Lawrence

Christopher A. Lawrence is a professional historian and military analyst. He is the Executive Director and President of The Dupuy Institute, an organization dedicated to scholarly research and objective analysis of historical data related to armed conflict and the resolution of armed conflict. The Dupuy Institute provides independent, historically-based analyses of lessons learned from modern military experience.
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Mr. Lawrence was the program manager for the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base, the Kursk Data Base, the Modern Insurgency Spread Sheets and for a number of other smaller combat data bases. He has participated in casualty estimation studies (including estimates for Bosnia and Iraq) and studies of air campaign modeling, enemy prisoner of war capture rates, medium weight armor, urban warfare, situational awareness, counterinsurgency and other subjects for the U.S. Army, the Defense Department, the Joint Staff and the U.S. Air Force. He has also directed a number of studies related to the military impact of banning antipersonnel mines for the Joint Staff, Los Alamos National Laboratories and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation.
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His published works include papers and monographs for the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment and the Vietnam Veterans of American Foundation, in addition to over 40 articles written for limited-distribution newsletters and over 60 analytical reports prepared for the Defense Department. He is the author of Kursk: The Battle of Prokhorovka (Aberdeen Books, Sheridan, CO., 2015), America’s Modern Wars: Understanding Iraq, Afghanistan and Vietnam (Casemate Publishers, Philadelphia & Oxford, 2015), War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat (Potomac Books, Lincoln, NE., 2017) , The Battle of Prokhorovka (Stackpole Books, Guilford, CT., 2019), The Battle for Kyiv (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2023), Aces at Kursk (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024), Hunting Falcon: The Story of WWI German Ace Hans-Joachim Buddecke (Air World, Yorkshire, UK, 2024) and The Siege of Mariupol (Frontline Books, Yorkshire, UK, 2024).
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Mr. Lawrence lives in northern Virginia, near Washington, D.C., with his wife and son.

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