Anyone know where I might find military records for german soldiers of World war two?

Answer 1

http://www.spiegel.de/international/germany/0,1518,520371,00.html
have been hoping to use this news story for someone.

One person had a question last week, but his email is not open and his question closed. NO way to reach him!
edit-
if anyone actually read the news story, it explains that these archives ARE now open for research.

Answer 2

The Nazis were infamous as meticulous record keepers, and much of it survived World War II and was used to punish the guilty at the resulting Nuremberg war crimes trials. Individual service records will almost certainly be as consise as their British or American equivilants, though of course they will be in German, not English. It is also quite likely that as in Britain, these records will only be available to descendants of the person concerned and are not publicly searchable like earlier World War One records which fall outside of the 70 year privacy rule.

It's probable you'd need to talk to the German version of the Ministry of Defence and make a written application and kinship declaration, but I'm only guessing based on UK practices. If you write to Germany, then you'll need to write in German, so you'd probably have to employ a German-based researcher or student to write letters on your behalf. Sign up to a specialist German genealogy group at Rootsweb or somewhere and speak to people who research in this part of the world regularly. There will be a lot less people on there then here on Yahoo, but they will be a lot more knowledgable with the situation on the ground. I rate your chances at just over 50/50, assuming the man you are looking for is a direct ancestor. The German equivalent of the Data Protection Act may scupper you, but until you ask someone (in German) you'll never know. Good luck with this.

Answer 3

If you live near or can visit the Washington DC area - you're set! Our government seized many German records and microfilmed them. Records that are still sealed in Germany are open to in person research at National Archives II in Maryland.

http://www.archives.gov/research/captured-german-records/foreign-records-seized.html

There are additional listings in the microfilm catalog.

Answer 4

You could try the site www.ancestry.de . It is the German site for Ancestry.com. Helps if you can speak German, however--I just looked up a name for a friend of mine and then had to find an online German-English dictionary.
Go to the bottom of the page at www.ancestry.com, and click on the DOWN arrow. It will list their affiliate sites. Click the picture of the black-red-yellow flag with DEUTSCHLAND (or "Germany") next to it .