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Remembered Today:

Free German Regimental History Books


egbert

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In a second-hand bookshop this week I saw a hardback book detailing the activities of a particular German regiment in WW1. Priced at a mere £100!!

I was so shocked that my wife had to calm me down.

Sorry Egbert but I can't recall the regiment in question.

Martin

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Ah! Perhaps this was an original I saw though , to be honest, it did not look that old to me. Tops 20yrs old. Unless of course it has been kept hidden and never studied.

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  • 2 weeks later...

The only recent book that I'm familiar with is "Lützows wilde verwegene Schar - Das Mecklenburgische Grenadier Regiment 89 in beiden Weltkriegen" which was published in 1990. I believe there is a WWI unit history published in the 1970s that has a yellow cover, can't remember the unit.

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The only recent book that I'm familiar with is "Lützows wilde verwegene Schar - Das Mecklenburgische Grenadier Regiment 89 in beiden Weltkriegen" which was published in 1990. I believe there is a WWI unit history published in the 1970s that has a yellow cover, can't remember the unit.

The most recent German regimental histories are IR 133 and RIR 203 in the 1960's (RIR 203 is in A4 format with a yellowish cover) and of course FAR 112 which was published only a few years ago (based on a manuscript from the 1940's).

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IR133 seems to be it; I recall it being a unit from Saxony and not many pages. It was listed on abebooks but is long gone. RIR203's I've seen; three of the volumes were listed on eBay about a year ago. This is the unit I suspect my grandfather served with, if not the 5. Garde-Regt. z. F.

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  • 1 year later...
On 10/9/2015 at 08:10, egbert said:

 

Egbert;

 

I am starting up my WK I work again (I never really stopped posting on GWF , but that is not exactly work),

and I am looking for different sources for unit histories for some German units. I have a lot of reference materials,

like say 60 Ranglisten, of which about 55 are the original paper volumes, and about 110 official histories, from

the Reichsarchiv, with a few duplicates, but only about five paper unit histories and say 10 CD histories, from 

Patrick Schallert, form about 10 years ago.

 

I have sent him a greeting, on Facebook, but I am having trouble opening his site (I have a slow Internet

connection), and the link you posted about a year and a half ago does not work. Can you give me some advice,

on what the "free regimental ------- histories" are? Are there now some unit histories on the Internet? Patrick's

prices were very reasonable, but free is good.

 

Is there another Internet address for his current offerings?

These are mostly questions I should be asking him, but I only had a Facebook link that worked badly, for me.

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Hello Bob!

Patrick had a few problems with the server in the past years. Try this link to his site:

http://military-books.lima-city.de/hp16/index.html

 

5-10€ for a CD is pretty cheap.

Well, if you are acollector, you prefer real books, of course, but I think, most of us need a few infos from the books, so a pdf is brilliant for the research.

The prices for original histories are getting up. I payed for FAR43 75€, but now it costs about 100€. Try to get a Garde zu Fuß unit under 100€... no chance...

Edited by The Prussian
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There are four available here

 

http://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/sresults?action=SearchSimilarAction&eid=306324

 

Clicking on "Find similar objects" produces the link to RIR 27. I had to download software through the site to read it.

 

Charlie

 

And a very useful list from Ken S

 

Edited by charlie2
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Here is an  online book   I  posted in 2015 from the catalogue of the National Library of Australia, seen when looking for something else. 

Reserve-Infanterie Regiment Nr. 3 / herausgegeben vom verein der Offiziere des ehem. Preuss. Res.-Inf.-Regts. 3, published 1926

Translated title: Reserve Infantry Regiment no. 3.

From the catalogue entry: Subjects Germany. Heer. Reserve-Infanterie-Regiment, 3. | World War, 1914-1918 -- Germany. | World War, 1914-1918 -- Regimental histories -- Germany.

http://nla.gov.au/nla.obj-13588890/view, or the link is on the catalogue record http://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/590761

Perhaps something to do with my browser, but in 2015, a large black space, when viewing the digital file, needed to be dragged to the left to view the text.

 

Cheers

Maureen

 

Edit, not regimental histories, but available online (click on coloured text)

 

German Official, or semi Official Histories: Der Weltkrieg 1914 bis 1918: die militärischen Operationen zu Lande 16 Volumes. Schlachten des Weltkrieges 22 Volumes.  Maps (Karten) are often at the back of individual volumes, and there may be photographs, all of which can be located by clicking on the Thumbnail gallery, and then selecting specific pages. The Digital State Library of Upper Austria.

Edited by Maureene
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Thanks everyone!

 

Although it is 3:36 AM here and I am in bed working on my iPhone, not one of my computers, I have already broken into Patrick's material and found one CDed book that I will find very useful, a history of 5. Reserve Division, which my grand-father considered "his division". I want to get the details of its mobilization in 1914. 

 

It it really was quite amazing. Although the III. Armee Korps was in a much higher state of readiness, the III. Reservekorps was able to mobilize and reach Belgium only 2-3 days after the active duty corps. When you consider how the men had to be physically collected, how so many equipment and weapons shortfalls had to be overcome, that is truly amazing. I think that one of the surprises that faced the Allies in 1914 was how good the German Reserve units really were. 

 

Anyone ever see the railroad volume of the German official history series "Der Weltkrieg 1914-1918"? It has a great deal of detail on how the many units were organized and moved to the west (and east) in a short period of time. 

 

Maureene, without even checking I am (almost) sure that the Reserve Infantrie Regiment Nr. 3 was part of I. Reservekorps positioned at the extreme east of Prussia, on land that is now Russia. There was a corps commander there, in 1914, von Francois ( not surprisingly an ethnic Frenchman, I think), who when the war started decided on his own not to fall back to established defensive positions as planned, but to invade Russia on his own. His move was so audacious that the German commander in the East had a nervous breakdown, and that is when Hindenburg had to be brought out of retirement, and Ludendorff rushed east to be his chief of staff, to take over. 

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Hello Bob!

Yes, the Eisenbahn volume is very interesting. The 2nd vol. was published in 2010...

P8280001.JPG

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Oh, interesting. I have two copies of the Volume I (you often get a better deal when you buy 15 volumes at once, which often leaves you with duplicates), and I noticed that the series suggested that there was going to be a second RR volume, but I thought that it never got done. Published in 2010? Interesting. 

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2 hours ago, charlie2 said:

There are four available here

 

http://www.wbc.poznan.pl/dlibra/sresults?action=SearchSimilarAction&eid=306324

 

Clicking on "Find similar objects" produces the link to RIR 27. I had to download software through the site to read it.

 

Charlie

 

And a very useful list from Ken S

 

If I follow your posted link, click on last page, last book "Infanterie greift an" from Rommel, -download book- nothing downloads. Is it only me or is there a general flaw on the poznan website?

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1 hour ago, egbert said:

If I follow your posted link, click on last page, last book "Infanterie greift an" from Rommel, -download book- nothing downloads. Is it only me or is there a general flaw on the poznan website?

 

It seems to be a flaw on the website.

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There is a fellow sometimes active on this forum who told me about 7-8 years ago that he had about 700 German

unit histories, and you can imagine the worth of that collection. There is a machine gun collector in the US who

openly posts about this, he bought several hundred MGs when there was little collecting interest, for "dirt cheap"

prices, almost scrap value. One can imagine what they are worth now. When you are a collector, and your interest

is on the beauty, or the historic or research value of the items, if you are sensible you keep one eye on the monetary

value of your collection, due to considerations of your family financial planning; questions of security (can you imagine

having several hundred machine guns at home, probably most of them operational. (Not in Britain, I suspect.} I do know

where, he has them in the same US state where my wife's step-father and brother manufacture .45 caliber sniper

rifles in the basement on a large lathe, and then shoot them {very well} in competitions with iron sights at ranges of

500 and 600 yards.) I would think that the local authorities in the area where the fellow has several hundred

machine guns have some interest in how he keeps and secures them.

 

I am headed to a Ranglisten story. There is a fellow on the East Coast of the US who trades military books out of

his home; I had bought a few Ranglisten from him. One day he offered to sell me about 14 Ranglisten in one lot,

and offered me a price per book about one-third the price I had paid him for individual books a year or two before.

I wondered why he offered them to me at that price. A Rangliste, to my mind, has value as a useful reference book,

and also as a collector's item, and even a decorative item; my two walls of floor to ceiling 100 year old books warm

my heart.

 

I wondered if this fellow assumed that the day was soon coming that hundreds of Ranglisten would suddenly be

digitized, or otherwise available on-line, and he feared that the value of his stock of books might suddenly plummet.

Technology can affect the value of collections in other ways; 30 years ago I was a serious collector of Roman coins,

and my sense was that their value was not increasing; I was assuming that the increased availability of metal

detectors, perhaps in places like Syria, was increasing the supply more quickly than over the last several hundred

years, keeping prices stable, despite increased interest. (To would-be thieves; almost all of my collection is in a bank

vault, and I have not seen them for almost 30 years.)

 

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I think that I am going to dig out my few paper unit histories (five?), and my ones on CDs (20?), and start creating an index,

and add into them the various links that you fellow kind Pals have posted, to develop a resource, to complement Patrick's

indices of the CDs that are available. I want to study the experiences of the men and units rushing to prepare themselves 

and their units for duty in the field, putting their private lives aside, sometimes for good. I have an interesting story or two

from my own family from this period.

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Well, I had an on-line session, and bought about 14 unit histories on CDs. Mostly component units of the army corps who's HQ my grand father served in in 1914 and 1915. Not quite the heart-warming effect of walls of books, but they should be quite useful. 

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From the Deutsche Digital Bibliothek , classified as  Erinnerungsblätter deutscher Regimenter. [...], Ehemals preußische Truppenteile, 44 online regimental histories, some / all from Deutsche Nationalbibliothek, some of which would have been mentioned in the link in post 16 above.  These  all appear to be  WW1 regimental histories -  I checked out some of the catalogue entries,  all of those checked seem to be classified as WW1.

https://www.deutsche-digitale-bibliothek.de/item/3NG25HN72MPUGPHOB7GZHRKQOETGF57Q

Cheers

Maureen

 
Edited by Maureene
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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 months later...

Yet I prefer to go to my library and go through my originals...

 

Jan

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