It really is quite amazing that the Memorial has such a large and comprehensive collection of these volumes, I believe one of the best in any library in the world. If you work on the principle of about 750 German infantry regiments (i.e. 3 regiments x 250 divisions), plus a few hundred more of artillery and cavalry, it’s a fair claim that with around 900 volumes, we do indeed have a pretty comprehensive collection. Of course there are some we don’t have, but I consider myself pretty unlucky if I can’t find one I’m looking for.

The quality does vary among them quite a bit. Sometimes the detail is excellent and there are personal accounts included for certain actions, and sometimes there is disappointingly little.

Some common themes among them include:

* Some can be conspicuously light on detail, particularly for battles they lose. Natural enough I suppose, but I think the Allies tend to examine their defeats in more detail and with a different attitude than the Germans who sometimes seemed in denial.

* Almost to the point of ‘ad nauseum’ , many German histories tend deny the concept that the Allied soldiers beat them man for man. Instead, they frequently point to the overwhelming ‘material power’ of the Allies, i.e. artillery, tanks, aircraft etc, as the reason why they were defeated, both in individual engagements and the war as a whole.

* There is a tendency to labour the heroism and sacrifice of the individual German soldier. Of course Allied histories did that as well (and still do) – but in my opinion the German ones really lay this on thick and perhaps in a more old-fashioned manner.

Finally, for those wondering about ‘Archivrat Stenger of the Reichsarchives in Potsdam’, Archivrat means simply ‘Archivist’. So the Reichsarchiv did not in fact have a rodent problem. While it didn’t have Rat problem, it did have a RAF problem; in 1945 the Potsdam archive was totally destroyed by a bombing raid.

Cheers,

Craig Tibbitts
Senior Curator
Official & Private Records
Research Centre
Australian War Memorial