German Military KIA 1939-45 (D. Dienststelle WASt ) Available on Ancestry

[Jean-Loup]

Some guys have 2 cards for some reason, and in this case the location of death, location of birth and unit are different (though very close). Strange....

[Ironcrown]

Yes, I noticed that too. And also that the back of the cards is scanned too, and sometime this gives further informations like place of burial, cause of death or next of kin address...

[Ironcrown]

However, I searched a lot in these last days and noticed that the chances to get a match may vary depending on the period and location. Late war casualties are more often missing than the early ones.
And it seems that the most hard to find matches are exactly what I am searching for: casualties on the Gothic line, from September 1944 onward

[Simon H]

Can you post the full title of the book please? Thanks

vr

Bob

FYI,

Rüdiger Overmans
Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg.

[Mil-Archive]

Got a half year subscription and this evening searched on maybe 22 or 24 names and found 18. The later the year /date of death the less likely. I was impressed that for some with unusual names/spellings you can find hits on just surname and birth year and year of death. For most searches I ran you get rank, unit, location etc. Well worth the cost so far. Searching for those who survived the war returned basically city phone book listings & not much else (so far) which are less useful.

[Simon H]

Cause of death being by a shot to the head seems very common. Given that these records were not seen by next of kin one wonders why this was so?

[WARNACH]

No. Only the soldiers with a regular "Gefallenenmeldung" are included. Please consult Overmans book about german losses in WW2 to understand how the administration worked. It's a great book.

So in my field of research "the Volkssturm" there is nothing to be found I suppose.

Peter