Foreign Military Studies (Redux)

Documents held at the German Federal Archive

The patch at the center of this picture is the work of Joeyeti (Creative Commons 3.0)

In the first piece in this series, I promised to investigate the “dragons hoard” of reports created by the Foreign Military Studies program that might be located in the German Federal Archive [das Bundesarchiv]. Having done this, I am happy to say that there seems to be far more to this collection than I had imagined, or, indeed, even hoped. In particular, I am told that, in addition to the German-language originals of many reports, it contains drafts, critiques, and correspondence related to their creation.

That’s the good news. The bad news is that, as far as I can tell, none of these documents have to be digitized. Thus, if you wish to consult them, you will either have to make a trip to Germany or pay the reproduction service at the Bundesarchiv to make digital copies for you.

The cost for the digital reproduction (in black and white) of a page is one half of a Euro. (This does not seem like much. However, as the service will make copies of all contents of a given folder, to include the backs of one-sided pages, I suspect that the cost will add up quickly.)

You can make a reconnaissance of this collection by visiting the website of the Bundesarchiv, finding Invenio, selecting Navigierende Suche, and using the gray area on the left side of the page to locate the collections with codes that run from ZA 1 to ZA 3.

You can find lots of “hints from Heloise” about the art of dealing with the Bundesarchiv on the Axis History discussion forum. (I would offer more specific advice. However, I have yet to order any reproductions from the Bundesarchiv.)

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Foreign Military Studies

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