Where and how to find the deceased soldier in the Second World War?

The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 is a terrible grief, the wounds from which still bleed. In those terrible years, the total human losses in our country are estimated at about 25 million people, 11 million soldiers. Of these, approximately six million are "officially" deceased.

In this case, it is believed that close people know at a glance where their native man was killed and buried. All the rest are missing / captured and not returned from it. The statistics are terrible. Not only that we lost so many soldiers, there we also have no idea where half of them! Whatever it was, the relatives of the dead and the missing do not despair and continue to search. For that they praise.

But how to find the deceased soldier in the Second World War, especially in the event that you have no decent experience in this? In this article we have collected the most general recommendations, which, nevertheless, can help you in this difficult matter. By the way, the found remains of German soldiers are recognized in Germany approximately by the same algorithm. Of course, with the correction for more accurate and complete information of the archives.

What to remember

First, immediately adjust to the hard and painstaking work. According to the data of the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, only in 2004 in Russia at least 40 thousand people disappeared without a trace! Just think about these figures: in the age of digital technology, total tracking of credit cards, tickets for trains and planes, people "manage" to vanish in a truly industrial scale. Many of them are never found.

And now think about how difficult it is to find a person who disappeared in the midst of military operations (especially in the initial period of the war). So do not despair, having experienced the first difficulties.

Where to start

You must clearly know the name, surname and patronymic. Since it is very difficult to find a dead soldier in the Second World War, you must remember this data especially clearly. Try to remember: did the person have a habit of somehow altering his name or surname? It happens that because of this the soldier could not find several decades, until they accidentally remembered that Elisha called himself Alexei, Prokofy turned into Peter in the hands of the clerk ...

If the surname of the person by hearing could be perceived incorrectly, search and among all more or less suitable variants. So, the Carriers may well be Perevoshchikov. In a word, it is very difficult to find a soldier of the Great Patriotic War.

Other initial information

In addition, you need to know where and when the person was called. As a rule, it is relatively easy to find these data. If there are at least some letters, postcards, official documents of those years in which the part in which soldiers fought was mentioned, collect them all. Place on the map, trace the route of the military unit, check with official sources. So you can find a soldier WWII, having only the most general information.

Of course, it is difficult to say when a person died, from whom letters ceased to arrive: it is quite possible that they simply malfunctioned the postal service, and the soldier was alive for several more months, during which the part managed to pass many hundreds of kilometers. But in some cases such a search yields its results.

Pay special attention to the fact of receiving severe wounds. It is known that a great many people died from their wounds. As a rule, they were buried in sanitary burial places in the immediate vicinity of the hospital. Sometimes documents about the fact of burial were preserved, and sometimes - no. Simply put, if the last letter from the soldier came from the hospital, when a person wrote about his injury, it is possible that he died there.

Alas, but in this case you will have to be frustrated: it is very difficult to search for such burial places. We will have to dig through the archives and track the route of a particular military field hospital. First, it is very long and difficult. Secondly, there is little guarantee of success. And further. Most often, soldiers buried in mass graves were massively, often in one undercover. No medallions, no marks on the map ... So often you can count only on a more or less exact place of burial.

Type of army

Strangely enough, this information is often given the latest importance. Attention! Before you find the deceased soldier in the Second World War, as accurately as possible, find out exactly which troops he served: information about the deceased is stored in different archives. Let us sum up. At first you need to find out the most basic information: name, date and place of conscription, the number of the unit in which the soldier served, and also at least the approximate date of his death.

We search on the Internet

Recently this trend has become very popular, but it is not worth much hope for it: there is no common database, various sources draw information from the archives of military units , etc. However, it is worth trying. If you have not found any data, do not be in a hurry to despair: contact the owners of the resource, describe your problem. In the case when they work directly with documents, specialists may well know some nuances, or give useful advice, up to help in your search.

So (in theory) you can find a soldier WWII by name. Of course, there is more probability of success in the event that this name was quite original. Otherwise, you have to go through hundreds of options.

In addition, do not forget to visit the sites devoted to genealogy, archive resources. Send requests to the Ministry of Defense: it is possible that there is at least some information about where and when the serviceman served before his death or disappearance. And further. For the reliability of information on such sites, no one is responsible. There is no guarantee that the information will be valid.

By the way. Before you find the dead soldier in the Second World War, try to find out at least something about his colleagues. It often happens that people who died on the same day are buried in the same place. And about some of them, the data reached their relatives, while other relatives remained completely unaware of the fate of their relative.

Try to reach out to your like-minded people who are also looking for their loved ones who fought in those places or the same part. Together, it will be more convenient for you to coordinate efforts: someone can search on the Internet, while the rest will take up archives.

Books of Memory

Practically in every local museum of local lore there is information about soldiers, called and dead. In places where the front line passed, in these documents it is often possible to find a list of soldiers killed and buried here. Also pay attention to the monuments: they also have granite steles, on which are carved the names and surnames of those soldiers who died during the liberation of a specific settlement.

Paradoxically, this information is often more detailed than information from quite official sources. Remember that the Book of Memory is almost every more or less large city. Address people in city forums: if one of them has access to this document, he can easily check the presence in it of information about your desired relative. That's how you can find a soldier WWII by name.

Requests for archives

For some reason it is believed that all information about the deceased is stored only in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, but this is not so. If your relative served in the Navy, in naval aviation or some coastal services, then information about him should be sought in the Navy archive, located in the city of Gatchina.

The most difficult situation is when a person has belonged to servicemen of various parts of the NKVD. Their archive is in Moscow, in the State Military Archive. But some of the information on employees of the NKVD and SMERSH is still classified, so the probability of issuing such data is very low. In any case, it is simply impossible to find the grave of a WWII soldier from special units.

Extremely difficult to search for the fact that far from always relatives knew about the real specifics of service in such parts. Often, according to documents, they served in ordinary infantry units, but they fought in completely different terrain.

To get information about the soldier from these archives, you need to write (it is highly desirable to print) a letter that contains brief information about the soldier, his name, patronymic, and rank ... In short, all the basic information. To the letter it is necessary to attach a blank envelope and stamps, as this will significantly speed up the receipt of the reply message.

If you do not know the rank of the missing person at all, or if you have reason to believe that he could have been awarded the rank of officer, write as follows6 "I ask you to check also the information on the 6.9 and 11 department." The fact is that in these sections of the archive information is kept on all military ranks and ranks. Immediately warn that the financing of this institution is very stunted, and therefore the answer from it can be expected until half a year and longer.

Simply put, with the available opportunities it is best to personally visit the archive and already there to ask all the questions that interest you. Of course, finding a soldier by last name (if you do not have other data) is unlikely to work, but if you have more information, the chance of success is great enough.

Analyzing the results of the request to the archive

It should be understood that even in the conditions of the war, losses were actually recorded in sufficient detail, and these data were sent for safekeeping. Each part of the Central Headquarters regularly reported on irretrievable losses, and in the reports listed names of names, title, date and place of death, information about relatives and burial place.

If a soldier is classified as missing, this means that for some time he was absent from the location of the unit, and his search, which (theoretically) was supposed to take 15 days, did not yield any results. A lot of missing people in the initial period of the war. This is due to the fact that at that time many parts were completely destroyed, all their documents were lost or deliberately destroyed by the command during the retreat.

We note that it is almost impossible to find a soldier missing in action in this case. It remains only to search for regional and local books of memory.

Important! Very often it happened that a man wounded and behind his unit, lying in a hospital, fought in another part. At this time the funeral came from the first. So often it happened that there were no living close relatives , the person actually "disappeared". Try again to look for veterans' organizations of the whole CIS. Often a relative finds soldiers who "died" a long time ago.

The man was demobilized, he realized that he had nowhere to go, but because he stayed in a place that he liked. More recently, one family found its grandfather, who was considered dead long ago (two funerals), but since 1946 he lived quietly in Estonia. So it does not hurt to contact local authorities of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, the Czech Republic, etc. Generally, it is very difficult to find a Soviet soldier who died in the territory of these countries.

Variants of responses from the archive

Thus, from the archive in response to your request, you can immediately receive four options:

• The most desirable option when information about the FIFO soldier, his rank, part, date and place of death, about the burial place comes.

• A message indicating the military unit, as well as the date and place of the missing person.

• There may be an answer indicating the alleged place of loss (the first months of the war) and the alleged number of the military unit, which was often obtained from close relatives by the results of their interviews (the part number was on postmarks from the last letter, if any).

• Report on the complete absence of data on the serviceman in the card file of irretrievable losses. As we have already said, this is due to the death of a soldier in the first months of the war, when the reports from the unit were simply not sent because of her complete death.

If you received the first two answers, then consider yourself lucky: from this moment you can arm yourself with cards and look for the place of rest of your ancestor (at least supposedly). That's how you can find the burial place of a soldier of WWII.

Other cases

These include death in the hospital (which we already mentioned), death in German captivity or the probable release of a soldier from it, followed by verification by NKVD officers.

If you have a suggestion that a soldier died of wounds in a hospital, you must send a request to the Military Medical Museum (more precisely, his archive). In the event that the last letter contains information about the wound (written by a friend from words, for example), but there is no information about the treatment, we will have to arm ourselves with directories and maps and find out which military field hospitals operated in those places.

In the event that you assume the capture of a serviceman, you should also send a request to the central archive of the Ministry of Defense: at the moment, there are just over 300,000 cards of soldiers who died in German captivity. Perhaps you are lucky.

Many are wondering about where to find the Pda of the missing soldier? The PDA in this case is a personal matter of an amnestied, or rather, "filtered" fighter. The fact is that the soldiers released from captivity were checked by the NKVD. If there was no reason to find fault with him, then often individual documents were not drawn up at all. In all other cases, duplicate cards should be kept in the archives of the FSB.

Here is how you can find a soldier who died in WWII. We really hope that our councils helped you in some way.