Inventory description: Following the imminent prohibition of the Great General Staff by the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, various military personnel (including Hans v. Seeckt, Wilhelm Groener, Hermann Ritter Mertz v. Quirnheim and Hans v. Haeften) endeavoured to be able to continue the former war-historical department of the Great General Staff as a civilian institution for future military historiography and evaluation of world war experience. After approval by the Reich Cabinet, the war-historical section was therefore taken over by the Reichsarchiv, newly founded on October 1, 1919, due to the dissolution of the Großen Generalstab. The first president of the Reichsarchiv was Major General Hermann Ritter Mertz v. Quirnheim until 31 October 1931, and Colonel Hans v. Haeften became head of the war history department. In addition to its function as the archival centre for the history of the German Reich since 1867, the Reichsarchiv also served as a research centre for the development of a major World War II work and for the evaluation of the war experiences of the World War II from 1914 to 1918 for the Reichswehr and a future rearmament. In 1924 the war history department was renamed the Historical Department. Its main task was to elaborate and publish the official military World War II work, together with the supplementary volumes on war armaments and war economy as well as the field railway system. She was also responsible for the publication of the series "Schlachten des Weltkrieges" ("Battles of the World War"); she also supported the "Erinnerungsblätter deutscher Regimenter" ("Memory Sheets of German Regiments") and the "Forschungen und Darstellungen aus dem Reichsarchiv" ("Researches and Presentations from the Reichsarchiv"). On November 1, 1931, retired Major General von Haeften became President of the Reichsarchiv, and his successor as Director of the Historical Department was Lieutenant Colonel Wolfgang Foerster. After the National Socialist seizure of power and the transition to open rearmament, the Reichsarchiv was reorganised according to military criteria. The official military and war historiography and military archives became the task of the Wehrmacht. From April 1, 1934, the Historical Department was under the control of the Reichswehr Ministry; one year later, it was completely removed from the Reichsarchiv and renamed the "Forschungsanstalt für Kriegs- und Heeresgeschichte" (Research Institute for War and Army History). On 1 April 1937 it was given the name "Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt des Heeres" (War Historical Research Institute of the Army), to which the library and printing works of the Reichsarchiv also passed. The military archives of the Reichsarchiv were taken over by the Heeresarchiv in Potsdam, which was newly founded on 1 April 1936. The former director of the research institute was promoted to president of the department. Foerster held this position until the end of the war. As a subordinate office of the Chief of the General Staff of the Army, the KGFA was now subordinate to the Commander-in-Chief of the Army. In the autumn of 1938, the General Staff re-established the office of Oberquartiermeister V under Lieutenant General Dr. Waldemar Erfurth, who was responsible for all war-historical and archival facilities of the army (7th War Science Department in the General Staff, Chief of the Army Archives, War History Research Institute). The KGFA was exclusively responsible for military historical research with the continuation and conclusion of the World War II work as well as the supplementary volumes. In addition, the research and presentation of the post-war fights of German troops and free corps as well as the fights in the colonies should be started. With the outbreak of the Second World War, however, Foerster's planned completion of work on the World War II plant at the end of 1942 was considerably delayed. At the end of September 1942, the KGFA was placed under the authority of Walter Scherff, the newly appointed "Representative of the Führer for Military Historiography" and head of the War History Department in the High Command of the Wehrmacht, Colonel (later Major General) Walter Scherff, on 17 May 1942. During the British air raid on Potsdam on 14 April 1945, extensive documents and archives were destroyed by fire, a large part of which had already been destroyed in an air raid on 14 February 1945. De facto the work of the War Historical Research Institute of the Army also ended with this. Structure of the KGFA (Source: RH 61/72): 1st President: Head of the Central Office (Z), at the same time responsible for personnel (ZP), budget (ZH) and mobilization matters (g. Kdos.); Head of Administration (ZV), for Central Office (ZB) with registry, post office, chancellery and printing office 2nd Division A: Director Group I : World War Plant Group II: War Armaments and War Economy 3rd Division A: Director Group I: World War Plant Group II: War Armament and War Economy 3rd Division A: War Department Department B: Director Group III: Colonial War Group IV: Military Railways Group VII: Research on 1918 Group VIII: Franktireur War Group IX: History of Heavy Artillery Group 4: Independent Groups Group V: Post-War Battles Group VI: Maps Group X: War and Army History up to the Beginning of the World War Group XI: Research Association for Post-War History Group XII: Individuals Library Other General Tasks: Warschuldfragen, Verwaltungsgeschichte Belgiens, Wehrwissenschaftliche Gesellschaft, Reichsinstitut für Geschichte des neuen Deutschlands Vorgänger der Kriegsgeschichtlichen Forschungsanstalt (KGFA) was the war history department of the Great General Staff of the Prussian Army, which was dissolved at the beginning of the war in 1914 and newly formed in the Reich Archives in 1919. Characterisation of the contents: The military archives of the German Reich suffered extraordinarily large losses during the Second World War, above all due to the destruction of the files remaining in the army archives during the Allied air raid on Potsdam on 14 April 1945. This also affected the documents of the Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt. Employees of the civilian Reich Archives and the Army Archives in Potsdam who had worked on behalf of the Soviet occupying forces until February 1946 were, however, able to recover large parts of the files of the Kriegsgeschichtliche Forschungsanstalt from the damaged building. They were transferred to the Central Archive of the Soviet Occupation Zone (later the Central State Archive of the GDR), which was newly founded in July 1946, where they were grouped under the "Reichsarchiv" holdings. The holdings were rearranged by the Central State Archives of the GDR in Potsdam and recorded by hand on index cards. For the most part, the traditional file titles were adopted, but in many cases supplemented by "Contained" notes. After it had been processed, the documents of the research institute were separated from the remaining documents of the Reichs- und Heeresarchiv and in the mid-1980s handed over to the military archive of the National People's Army (NVA) in Potsdam. The files were stored there under the inventory designation W 10. After the state end of the GDR, the documents were transferred to the Bundesarchiv-Militärarchiv in Freiburg in 1994 and were added to the existing holdings in Freiburg. The KGFA documents contained in RH 61 arose primarily in connection with the work on the World War II plant. It includes business files, correspondence files, research papers, studies, field reports, manuscript drafts, fair copies, flag proofs, copies of files of military and political authorities and agencies, of war diaries and personal records of officers, as well as notes of editors and newspaper clippings. In addition, detached parts of original documents, in a few cases even entire files, from the Reich Archives or Army Archives are in the process of being handed down. The documents offer an important replacement for the considerable war-related gaps in the records of the Prussian-German army before 1919. The present provisional index (copy of the index cards) of the KGFA holdings consists of the two parts of the records in Freiburg (RH 61) and formerly in Potsdam (formerly W 10). It is intended to merge the two separate stocks. State of development: Online-Findbuch Scope, Explanation: 2500 Citation method: BArch, RH 61/...
