Naval archive

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As a Marine Archive describe themselves in Germany, several institutions and websites. But only the archives of the German and Austrian navies were officially allowed to claim this title. The history of the German authority , whose name has been changed several times, is to be described here.

First World War

The War History Department of the German Navy was formed on February 15, 1916 in the Admiral's staff. Their task was to collect all operational files and war diaries of the Imperial Navy with a view to documenting naval warfare . However, during the November Revolution of 1918, secret or compromising material and documents relating to the latest developmental matters were destroyed by the Navy itself.

Interwar period

In 1921 the department was incorporated into the Reichsmarine as a naval archive . Until March 31, 1934, it was subject to the inspection of the educational system , then to the chief of the naval command and from 1935 to the commander-in-chief of the navy . The naval archive thus existed alongside the Reichsarchiv in Potsdam as the central archive for all files of the German Reich, which had only been founded in 1919.

The naval archives took on the editing of a 21-volume elaboration entitled Der Krieg zur See 1914–1918 , which was published by ES Mittler . While the official work of the Reichsarchiv on the First World War, “The World War 1914–1918” , was created under the supervision of a civilian scientific body, the head of the naval archive, Eberhard von Mantey , succeeded in removing the depiction of the naval war from such control. All volumes were edited exclusively by active or inactive officers. The work focused on the description of the use of naval forces on a tactical and operational level in order to obtain the basis for future leadership principles, but it provided a largely inadequate analysis of fundamental strategic problems of naval warfare - a weakness of the work that was exacerbated by its structure: the theaters of war were considered separately and the treatment of the interactions of naval warfare was neglected compared to individual methods of naval warfare. As a result of the rapid processing forced by Mantey, there was also a lack of critical discussion of Tirpitz's naval policy, since most of the authors of the War at Sea felt connected to the “master builder” of the Imperial Navy .

Before the Reichsarchiv published the first volume of its presentation, six volumes of Der Krieg zur See 1914–1918 had already appeared by autumn 1923 . In view of the poor public image of the Navy, the work was intended to keep memories of the navy's achievements in the war alive. Operations and battles by the German naval forces had to be described in great detail. The performance of the commanders, commanders and crews should be emphasized, inadequacies and mistakes, however, had to be met with understanding. The technical and scientific problems of this concept were deliberately subordinated to the aim of proving the legitimacy and necessity of a German fleet in order to create the basis for its reconstruction.

The content was based on a pattern of interpretation that Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz had given in his memoirs (1919). There was no criticism of the weaknesses of the Tirpitz fleet. Most authors, on the other hand, tended to believe that the German fleet, as it was formulated in the first volume of Der Krieg in der Nordsee , “as a result of the unfavorable geographic situation, only caused damage to English and German overseas trade [...] the conquest of sea supremacy in a series of victorious battles ”could have achieved. Tirpitz had been informed about important details of the volumes and asked to actively participate. The corps spirit of the drafting naval officers meant that no criticism of Tirpitz was to be expected, nor of fleet commanders such as Reinhard Scheer or Franz von Hipper - instead, the naval archives took into account the objections of these officers. Opposite Erich Raeder , the 1928 chief was of the Navy, later remarked of Mantey years that Tirpitz one at this time in the naval archives and had gone out and the first volumes, which treated the war at sea in the North Sea, are written in the senses. The editor of the North Sea volumes, Otto Groos , based himself on Tirpitz's view that it was Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann Hollweg who prevented the fleet from being used at the right time. Those officers who, in Tirpitz's opinion, had failed, such as the chief of the deep-sea fleet, Admiral Friedrich von Ingenohl , were criticized, while all exonerating aspects, but also Tirpitz's own attitude, which was by no means decisive at the beginning of the war, were deliberately concealed. The marine history collection was expanded during this time to include files from the construction department of the Imperial Navy.

Erich Raeder made sure that “critical” works were no longer allowed to appear. The representation of the trade war with submarines was delayed after the first manuscript by a former submarine commander was unusable. The new author, Rear Admiral a. D. Arno Spindler , endeavored to present a scientifically flawless presentation and came to results that were rejected by the older officers. The head of the naval archives, Eberhard von Mantey, was only able to get the first volume unedited in 1933 against considerable resistance. The fourth volume did not appear until 1941 for official use only. A critical treatise by William Michaelis entitled Tirpitz's strategic work before and during the World War was not published in 1933, nor was Gustav Bachmann's manuscript on the admiral staff of the Imperial Navy .

The transfer of the Reichsmarine to the Kriegsmarine was followed on January 22, 1936 by the renaming of the naval archive to the war science department (also a research institute). As part of this department, the archive was connected to the research facility. From now on, taxes from the period before 1914 and from the Reich and Kriegsmarine were also received. After the "Anschluss" of Austria , the Department was also joined by the Navy Archives in Vienna.

Second World War

With the reorganization of the OKM at the end of 1939, the department came under the name Skl KA temporarily to the naval command office and was then subordinated to the chief of staff of the naval command as Skl MKrGesch . The department was not only entrusted with archival tasks, but also with the safekeeping of independent reports and the publication of the journal Marine-Rundschau . The Marine-Rundschau was published for the first time in November 1890 as a monthly journal for marine technology and naval warfare by the message office of the Reichsmarineamt . From 1953 the non-official working group for defense research took over the editorial management, in 1989 the magazine was discontinued.

On November 22, 1943, the department moved from Berlin to Tambach Castle near Coburg due to continued bombing to secure the holdings . The self-destruction ordered immediately before the surrender, ordered by the Fiihrer's commissioner for military historiography, established in 1942, primarily concerned the documents still in active units and offices, only some of the archive material from the First World War. In contrast to the other branches of the army, air force and Waffen-SS, the Navy implemented this order only hesitantly and to a limited extent.

post war period

After the Second World War, the naval archive in Tambach was confiscated by a command unit of the British intelligence service, which belonged to the 3rd US Army under the command of George S. Patton . After reviewing the documents of the Kriegsmarine, a research team led by Maxwell Fyfe collected incriminating material, which was brought against the former commanders of the Kriegsmarine, Raeder and Dönitz, in the context of the Nuremberg trials . After its storage location, the holdings were informally referred to as the Tambach Archive and brought to London, where they were saved on microfilm [2] and only returned to the Federal Republic of Germany and the responsible Federal Military Archives from the end of the 1950s . The navy documents that remained in Berlin, kept in the Shell house , fell slightly victim to the flames; the majority of the surviving items went to Russian archives in 1945. Insofar as this material was returned to the former GDR military archive in 1988, it was then transferred to the Federal Archives in Freiburg / Br. In the course of the dissolution of the Potsdam Intermediate Military Archive (1995) . accepted. These are primarily construction documents and ship drawings.

A list of all holdings with a description and details of the duration and scope can be found on the website of the Federal Archives under online overview of holdings .

Head of department

Head of the Vienna Marine Archive:

Naval archive as a source

Official printing works

  • The War at Sea 1914–1918 Part. ed. from the marine archive / edit. by Eberhard von Mantey; partly ed. from the Department of War Studies / arr. by Kurt Assmann; partly ed. in connection with the Federal Archives-Military Archive of the Working Group for Defense Research / edit. by Walther Hubatsch; partly ed. from the Military History Research Office / edit. by Gerhard P. Groß. Publishing house ES Mittler, Berlin / Bonn / Hamburg
Part 1: The war in the North Sea
  • Vol. 1. From the beginning of the war to the beginning. Sept. 1914. Arranged by Otto Groos : 1920. XV, 293 p.: With 60 ct., Tab. + Attachments.
  • Vol. 1. From the beginning of the war to the beginning. Sept. 1914. Arranged by Otto Groos: 2nd revised edition 1922. XV, 293 pages:
  • With 61 ct .., tab + attachments
  • Vol. 2. From the beginning. Sept. to Nov. 1914. Edited by Otto Groos: 1922. XIV, 340, 1 p.: With 38 sketches, ct., Tab. + Attachments.
  • Vol. 3. From the end of Nov. 1914 to the beginning of Feb. 1915. Edited by Otto Groos: 1923. XIII, 300 p.: With 30 sketches, Ktn, Tab. + Anl.
  • Vol. 4. From the beginning. Febr. To the end of Dec. 1915. Arranged by Otto Groos: 1924. XV, 442 p.: With 46 sketches, [color] Ktn, tab. + Appendix.
  • Vol. 5. From January to June 1916. Text volume. Arranged by Otto Groos: 1925. XX, 568 S.: With 81 sketches, Ktn, Tab. U. Investments.
  • Vol. 5a From January to June 1916. Map book. Arranged by Otto Groos: 1925. With 81 sketches, 43 ktn, tab. Investments.
  • Vol. 6. From June 1916 to spring 1917. Arr .: Walter Gladisch : 1937. 352 S.: With 18 ctn. u. 19 sketches.
  • Vol. 7. From the summer of 1917 to the end of the war in 1918. Edited by Walter Gladisch: 1965. XIV, 368 p.: With Ktn. u. 9 Tab.
  • Vol. 7. From the summer of 1917 to the end of the war in 1918. Critical edition; Text ribbon and card slipcase. on behalf of the Military History Research Office. and new ed. by Gerhard P. Groß: 2006. VI, 486 pp.; With a 4 kt ax.
Part 2: The war in the Baltic Sea
  • Vol. 1. From the beginning of the war to mid-March 1915. Ed. By Rudolph Firle : 1921. X, 290 p.: With 12 ct. Tab.
  • Vol. 2. The war year 1915. Arranged by Rudolph Firle: 1929. XVI, 385 pp. + With 62 annexes, ct., Sketches and Tab.
  • Vol. 3. From the beginning of 1916 until the end of the war. Edited by Ernst Freiherr von Gagern : 1964. XV, 462 S.: With 5 ctn. u. 14 supplements.
Part 3: The trade war with submarines
  • Vol. 1. Prehistory. Arranged by Arno Spindler : 1932. XII, 269 p.: 6 text sketches a. 2 tab. + With 34 app.
  • Vol. 2 February to September 1915. Arranged by Arno Spindler: 1933. XI, 299 p.: With 8 multicolored. Stone dr. Kt. U. 10 text sketches.
  • Vol. 3 October 1915 to January 1917. Arranged by Arno Spindler: 1934. XII, 400 p.: With 16 multicolored. Stone dr. Kt. U. 12 text sketches.
  • Vol. February 4 to December 1917. Arranged by Arno Spindler. Reprint [d. Ed.] 1941: 1964. VI, 559 p.: With 15 kt., 7 text sketches a. 44 mine sketches.
  • Vol. 5 January to November 1918. Edited by Arno Spindler: 1966. VIII, 447 p., 3 Ktn.-Beil. With 3 ct. u. numerous Tab.
Part 4: The Cruiser War in Foreign Waters
  • Vol. 1. The cruiser squadron. Edited by Erich Raeder : 1922. With numerous. Kt., Tab. U. Appendix
  • Vol. 1. The cruiser squadron. Edited by Erich Raeder: 2. verb. Edition 1927. XVII, 459 S.: With Kt., Tab., Anl., Abb.
  • Vol. 2. The activity of the small cruiser Emden. Koenigsberg u. Karlsruhe, Geyer. Edited by Erich Raeder: 1923. XVI, 374 pp.
  • Vol. 3. The German auxiliary cruisers. Edited by Eberhard von Mantey: 1937. VI, 374 pp.: With 51 sketches.
Part 5: The War in Turkish Waters
  • Vol. 1. The Mediterranean Division. Edited by Hermann Lorey : 1928 [Ed. 1927]. XVI, 430 p.: With sketches, ct. U. Investments.
  • Vol. 2. The battle for the straits. Edited by Hermann Lorey: 1938. XI, 221 p.: With 16 ct. 8 sketches.
Part 6: The battles of the Imperial Navy in the German colonies. Tsingtau; German East Africa. Edited by Kurt Assmann: 1935. XVI, 330 p., Ct. + Register.
Part 7: The surface forces and their technology. Edited by Paul Köppen: 1930. XII, 314 pp. + Attachments.
  • War diary of the Naval War Command 1939–1945. Edition A Facsimile Edition on behalf of the Military History Research Office and in connection with the Federal Archives-Military Archives ed. by Werner Rahn and Gerhard Schreiber with co-workers from Hansjoseph Maierhöfer. 78 volumes. Herford, Bonn. Middle 1988-1997.

Microfilms

Microfilm editions of the library for contemporary history in Stuttgart:

  • War diary of the Naval War Command 1939–1945. Operations department.
  • War diary of the Naval War Command 1939–1945. Chief MND (Navy Intelligence Service).
  • War diary of the Naval War Command 1939–1945. Foreign Navy Division.

Microfilm catalogs

Guides to the microfilmed records of the German Navy, 1850-1945 National Archives and Records Administration . Washington:

  • Vol. 1. U-boats and T-boats 1914-1918. 1984. LVI, 355 pp.
  • Vol. 2. Records relating to U-boat warfare, 1939-1945. 1985. - XIX, 263 pp.
  • Vol. 3. Records of the German Naval High Command 1935-1945. 1999. - IX, 24 pp.
  • Vol. 4. Records of the German Navy operational commands in World War II. 2005. - XXVI, 170 p .;
  • Vol. 5. Pre-World War I records of the imperial German Navy and its predecessors, 1822-1919. 2006. - XXIV, 51 pp.

Literature on the naval archive

  • Paul Heinsius: The files of the German Navy. Its evaluation so far and its whereabouts. In: The world as history. 13, 1953, pp. 198-202.
  • Paul Heinsius: The whereabouts of the files of the German Navy. The former naval archive, naval court files and personnel files, medical files as well as pamphlets and libraries. In: The archivist. 8, 1955, pp. 75-86.
  • Gerhart Enders: The former German military archives and the fate of the German military files after 1945. In: Journal for military history. 8/1969. Pp. 599-608.
  • Howard M. Ehrmann: The German Naval Archives (Tambach). In: Robert Wolfe: Captured German and Related Records. Athens 1968. pp. 157-162.
  • Kurt Bertram: Archiving of technical files returned from abroad. In: The military archive in the Federal Archives. No. 4, September 1963.
  • Gert Sandhofer: The tradition of the Imperial Navy as a source for general history. In: Heinz Boberach, Hans Booms (Ed.): From the work of the Federal Archives. Boppard am Rhein 1977, ISBN 3-7646-1690-3 , pp. 299-309.
  • Wolfram Schmidt: Takeover of archives from the USSR. In: Archive messages. 5/1989, pp. 179-180.
  • Sebastian Rojec: Sunken Hopes: The German Navy in Dealing with Expectations and Disappointments 1871-1930 . Berlin 2017, ISBN 978-3-11-052903-6 . In particular: the activity of the naval archive. Pp. 363-420

Web links

Official Archives

Private naval archives

Individual evidence

  1. ^ A b c Werner Rahn: Strategic options and experiences of the German naval command 1914 to 1944. In: Wilfried Rädisch (Hrsg.): Werner Rahn - service and science. Military History Research Office MGFA, Potsdam 2010, ISBN 978-3-941571-08-2 , pp. 48-50.
  2. ↑ a b c d Werner Rahn: Strategic options and experiences of the German naval command 1914 to 1944: On the chances and limits of a central European continental power against sea powers. In: Werner Rahn (Ed.): German Marines in Transition. From a symbol of national unity to an instrument of international security . Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-59464-5 , p. 208.
  3. ^ Walter Schwengler: Navy and Public 1919 to 1939. In: Werner Rahn (Hrsg.): German Marines in Change. From a symbol of national unity to an instrument of international security . Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-59464-5 , p. 338.
  4. ↑ Michael Epkenhans: "Clio" and the Navy. In: Werner Rahn (Ed.): German Marines in Transition. From a symbol of national unity to an instrument of international security . Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-59464-5 , p. 373 f.
  5. ↑ Michael Epkenhans: "Clio" and the Navy. In: Werner Rahn (Ed.): German Marines in Transition. From a symbol of national unity to an instrument of international security . Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-59464-5 , p. 374.
  6. ↑ a b Michael Epkenhans: "Clio" and the Navy. In: Werner Rahn (Ed.): German Marines in Transition. From a symbol of national unity to an instrument of international security . Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-59464-5 , p. 374.
  7. ↑ Werner Rahn: Strategic options and experiences of the German naval command 1914 to 1944: On the chances and limits of a Central European continental power against sea powers. In: Werner Rahn (Ed.): German Marines in Transition. From a symbol of national unity to an instrument of international security . Oldenbourg, Munich 2009, ISBN 978-3-486-59464-5 , p. 210.
  8. ↑ navy-history.com
  9. ↑ https://www.historisches-marinearchiv.de/sonstiges/inhaltsverzeichnis/mr.php Table of contents as download
  10. ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume Two: 1942–1945 The Hunted. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 , p. 815.
  11. ↑ Clay Blair : The Submarine War. Volume Two: 1942–1945 The Hunted. Wilhelm Heyne Verlag, Munich 1998, ISBN 3-453-16059-2 , p. 815.
  12. ↑ Erich Gröner: The German warships 1815-1945. Volume 2: Torpedo boats, destroyers, speedboats, minesweepers, mine clearance boats. Bernard & Graefe, Bonn 1999, ISBN 3-7637-4801-6 , p. 7 (foreword)
  13. ↑ navy-history.com