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Guide

Wehrmacht conscripts

This guide is for families of men from the territories annexed to the Reich: Upper Silesia, Pomerania and Greater Poland. From 1940 their inhabitants were sorted by the German People's List (Volksliste), and from 1942 Category III also meant compulsory military service. Conscription was mostly forced: refusing risked a charge of desertion and reprisals against the family. According to the historian Ryszard Kaczmarek, some half a million Poles served in the Wehrmacht; at least 200,000 of them died, and around 83,000 deserted and ended up in the Polish Armed Forces in the West.

How to search

  1. 01Start with what the family kept: the Soldbuch, the identity disc (Erkennungsmarke) or its number, photographs in uniform, field-post letters with a Feldpost number, a notice of death or disappearance. The disc number and the field-post number identify the unit. You will also need precise details: full name (including its German spelling), date and place of birth.
  2. 02The main source is the former Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), part of the Bundesarchiv since 2019. Requests about Wehrmacht soldiers are handled by its Abteilung Deutsches Reich in Berlin-Tegel: send a signed application for use (Benutzungsantrag) and, if possible, the research order form, as a scan by email or by post. The holdings include some 100 million identity-disc reports, about 15 million casualty reports and a card index of more than 18.5 million names. Men from the Volksliste appear in these files as Germans, so give several spellings of the surname.
  3. 03If the soldier was killed, search the online grave register of the Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (around 5.4 million dead and missing). A first name, surname or place of birth is enough; not every birthplace is recorded, so try without it too. If the name is not found, the site offers an enquiry form.
  4. 04If the soldier went missing on the Eastern Front or was taken prisoner by the Soviets, the German Red Cross Tracing Service (DRK-Suchdienst) searches for him using records from the archives of the former USSR. People living outside Germany should first contact their own national Red Cross, in Poland the Polish Red Cross National Information and Tracing Bureau. Records of prisoners held by the Western Allies (some 7 million documents) are in the Bundesarchiv.
  5. 05Many men taken from the Wehrmacht, especially those captured in the West, later joined the Polish Armed Forces; after the surrender in Italy the 2nd Corps grew quickly thanks to them. Their files from PSZ service are held by the UK Ministry of Defence (request through gov.uk); see the guide “Soldiers in the West”.
  6. 06Volksliste questionnaires survive in part in the state archives and the IPN. The IPN's archival catalogue describes, for example, a series of DVL questionnaires from Katowice; state archive holdings are searched through szukajwarchiwach.gov.pl (see the guide “Where to start”). An entry on the list records a German official's decision, not the person's identity.

Where to search

We checked the addresses and holdings on these institutions' own websites. Their rules can change, so check their current pages before sending a request.

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