Massive German Grave unearthed in Russia.

[squidney86]

Very cool video. Thank you for posting. Anyone have any idea as to why some would have been buried belly down compared to up?

Sydney

[dutchcollector]

thanks for sharing, really impressive. horrible wounds were inflicted on those bodies...

[headeast]

So very interesting and sad

Can someone explain how you read a german dog tag? I didn't see any names etc. How would they match up the ID to a name?

And would families at this date have been tried to be reached to inform?

thanks

[Admiraal]

So very interesting and sad

Can someone explain how you read a german dog tag? I didn't see any names etc. How would they match up the ID to a name?

And would families at this date have been tried to be reached to inform?

thanks

German dogtags have a complicated identification system.
During the mobilization of 1939 every soldier was issued one. The unit the soldier was in at that moment was stamped on the dogtag. So soldiers from 1st Company of Infantry-Regiment 3 would have something like: 1./I.R.3. Also stamped on the dogtag was a sequence number. So the first soldier receiving a dogtag in the unit received number 1. The 14nd soldier number 14, etc. This number in combination with the unit on the dogtag was unique and identified the soldier. The units would send a list with the names and the dogtag inscriptions back to (i believe an office in) Berlin to be archived. This is different compared to the US system of one large unique number to each soldier.

Soldiers that enlisted in the army after the mobilization received their dogtag from their training/replacement unit on the same way as above.
When a soldier lost his dogtag he would receive a new one from the unit he was in at that moment (so the unique dogtag inscription of the soldier would change). This could be a field unit or replacement unit. Ofcourse this info was then send to Berlin to be changed and archived. Every field unit had a bunch of pre-stamped dogtags as reserve for lost dogtags.

This is why most of the dogtags you see have pre-mobilisation or training/replacement units stamped on them.
Dogtags with inscriptions of units created late-war are replacement dogtags.
The above explanation applies for Army/SS dogtags.

[headeast]

Thank you much for the explanation!

I always wondered how you could tell who the actual soldier was

good info!