The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 is a terrible grief, the wounds of which still bleed. In those terrible years, the total loss of life in our country is estimated at about 25 million people, with 11 million being soldiers. Of these, approximately six million are considered “officially” dead.
In this case, it is believed that loved ones at least know where their loved one died and was buried. All the rest are missing / stolen and not returning from it. The statistics are scary. Not only have we lost so many soldiers, we still have no idea where half of them are! Anyway, the relatives of the dead and missing do not despair and continue to search. For which they praise.
But how to find a dead soldier in the Second World War, especially if 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 identified in Germany by approximately the same algorithm. Of course, adjusted for more accurate and complete information archives.
Things to remember
Firstly, immediately tune in to hard and painstaking work. According to the Ministry of Internal Affairs of the Russian Federation, only in 2004 at least 40 thousand people went missing in Russia! Just think about these numbers: in the age of digital technology, the total tracking of credit cards, train and plane tickets, people "manage" to disappear on a truly industrial scale. Many of them are never found.
Now think about how difficult it is to find a person who disappeared in the midst of hostilities (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 middle name. 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 twisting his first or last name? It happens that because of this soldier they could not be found for several decades until they accidentally remembered that Elisha called himself Alexei, Prokofy in the hands of a clerk turned into Peter ...
If a person’s surname by ear could be perceived incorrectly, look for among all the slightest suitable options. So, carriers may well be Perevoshchikov. In a word, finding a WWII soldier can be very difficult.
Other background information
In addition, you need to know where and when the person was called. As a rule, finding these data is relatively easy. If there are at least some letters, postcards, official documents of those years in which the part in which the soldier fought was mentioned, collect them all. Put on the map, trace the route of the military unit, check with official sources. So you can find a WWII soldier, having only the most general information.
Of course, it can be difficult to say when a person died, from whom letters ceased to come: it is quite possible that the postal service simply failed, and the soldier was still alive for several months, during which a part managed to travel many hundreds of kilometers. But in some cases, such a search yields its results.
Pay particular attention to the fact of serious injuries. It is known that a lot of people died from wounds. As a rule, they were buried in sanitary graves in the immediate vicinity of the hospital. Sometimes documents on the fact of burial were kept, and sometimes not. Simply put, if the last letter from a soldier came from the hospital when a person wrote about his injury, it is possible that he died there.
Alas, in this case you have to be upset: it is very difficult to search for such burial places. We'll have to rummage through the archives and track the route of a particular
military field hospital. Firstly, it is very long and difficult. Secondly, there are few guarantees of success. And further. Most often, soldiers were buried en masse in sanitary graves, and often in one of them. No medallions, no marks on the map ... So you can often count on a more or less exact place of burial.
Type of army
Oddly enough, this information is often given the most recent value. Attention! Before you find a dead soldier in the Second World War, find out as accurately as possible in which particular troops he served: information about the dead is stored in different archives. To summarize. At first, you need to find out the most basic information: F. I. O., date and place of conscription, the number of the unit in which the soldier served, as well as at least the approximate date of his death.
Searching the Internet
Recently, this direction has gained great popularity, but you should not rely heavily on it: there is no common database, various sources draw information from the archives of military units , etc. However, it’s worth trying. If you have not found any data, do not rush 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 searches.
So (theoretically) you can find a WWII soldier by last name. Of course, it is more likely to succeed if this surname was quite original. Otherwise, you have to sort through hundreds of options.
In addition, do not forget to visit the sites dedicated to genealogy, archive resources. Send inquiries to the Ministry of Defense: it is entirely possible that there is at least some information about where and when the soldier served before his death or disappearance. And further. No one is liable for the accuracy of the information on such sites. There is no guarantee that the information will be valid.
By the way. Before you find a 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. Moreover, about some of them the data reached relatives, while other relatives remained completely ignorant of the fate of their relative.
Try to reach out to like-minded people who are also looking for their loved ones who fought in those places or in the same unit. Together, it will be more convenient for you to coordinate efforts: someone can search on the Internet, while the rest will deal with archives.
Books of memory
In almost every local museum of local lore there is information about the soldiers, the drafted and the dead. In the places along which the front line passed, in these documents one can often find a list of soldiers who died and are buried here. Also pay attention to the monuments: with them there are also granite steles on which the names and surnames of those soldiers who died during the liberation of a particular settlement are carved.
Paradoxically, but this information often turns out to be much more detailed than information from quite official sources. Remember that almost every more or less large city has a memory book. Contact people at city-wide forums: if any of them has access to this document, he can very well verify that he contains information about your desired relative. So you can find a WWII soldier by last name.
Archive Requests
For some reason, it is believed that all information about the victims is stored only in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, but this is not so. If your relative served in the fleet, in naval aviation or some coastal services, then information about him should be sought in the Navy’s archive located in the city of Gatchina.
The most difficult thing happens when a person was a member of the military personnel of various parts of the NKVD. Their archive is located in Moscow, in the State Military Archive. But some of the information on the employees of the NKVD and SMERSH is still classified, so the likelihood of such data being issued is very low. In any case, it is simply impossible to find the grave of a WWII soldier from special units.
It is extremely difficult to search for the fact that relatives were far from always aware of the real specifics of the service in such units. Often, according to documents, they served in ordinary infantry units, but they themselves fought in a completely different area.
In order to get information about a soldier from these archives, you need to write (it is highly desirable to print) a letter stating brief information about the soldier, his name, patronymic, rank ... In a word, all basic information. A clean envelope and stamps must be attached to the letter, as this will greatly accelerate the receipt of a response message.
If you do not know the military rank of the missing person at all, or if you have reason to believe that he might have been assigned the rank of officer, write as follows6 “I ask you to check also the information on sections 6.9 and 11”. The fact is that in these sections of the archive information is stored on all military ranks and ranks. We immediately warn that the financing of this institution is very weak, and therefore it is quite possible to wait for an answer from it up to six months or longer.
Simply put, with the opportunity, it is best to personally visit the archive and ask all your questions there. Of course, to find a soldier by last name (if you do not have other data) is unlikely to succeed, but if you have more information, the chance of success is quite large.
Analysis of query results to archive
It should be understood that even in war conditions the losses were indeed recorded in sufficient detail and this information was sent for storage. Each unit regularly reported to the Central Headquarters on irretrievable losses, and in the reports lists of names, rank, date and place of death, information about relatives and the place of burial were indicated.
If a soldier is assigned to the category of missing persons, this means that for some time he was absent from the location of the unit, and his search, which (theoretically) should have taken 15 days, did not yield any results. A lot of missing in the initial period of the war. This is due to the fact that at that time many units were completely defeated, all their documents were lost or deliberately destroyed by the command during the retreat.
Note that in this case it is almost impossible to find a missing soldier. All that remains is a search of regional and local memory books.
Important! Very often it happened that a man who was wounded and lagging behind his unit, having lain in a hospital, fought in another unit. At this time, the funeral came from the first. It so often happened that there were no living close relatives , the person actually “disappeared”. Try again to search among veteran organizations throughout the CIS. Often a relative is found by soldiers who "died" a long time ago.
The man was demobilized, he realized that he had nowhere to go, and therefore remained in a place that he liked. More recently, one family found their grandfather, who was presumed dead a long time ago (two funerals), but since 1946 he has been living quietly in Estonia. So it does not hurt to get in touch with local authorities of Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, the Czech Republic, etc. In general, it can be very difficult to find a Soviet soldier who died in these countries.
Archived Answer Options
Thus, from the archive in response to your request, four possible answers can be received at once:
The most desirable option when information comes about the name of the soldier's F. I. O., his rank, unit, date and place of death, the place of burial.
A message indicating the military unit, as well as the date and place of the missing person.
An answer may be received indicating the alleged place of loss (the first months of the war) and the estimated military unit number, which was often obtained from close relatives based on the results of their survey (the unit number was on postmarks from the last letter, if there was one).
A message about the complete lack of data on a soldier in a file cabinet of irreparable losses. As we have already said, this is due to the death of a soldier in the first months of the war, when reports from the unit were simply not sent in connection with its complete death.
If you got the first two answers, then consider yourself lucky: from this moment you can arm yourself with cards and look for the resting place of your ancestor (at least hypothetical). So you can find the burial place of a WWII soldier.
Other cases
These include death in the hospital (as we already mentioned), death in German captivity, or the probable release of a soldier from him, followed by verification by the NKVD officers.
If you have an assumption that the soldier died from wounds in the hospital, you must send a request to the Military Medical Museum (more precisely, its archive). If the last letter contains information about the wound (written in a different way, for example), but there is no information about the treatment, you will have to arm yourself with guides and maps and find out what specific military field hospitals operated in those places.
In the event that you intend to capture a soldier, you should also send a request to the central archive of the Ministry of Defense: today, there are a little more than 300 thousand cards of soldiers who died in German captivity. You might be lucky.
Many people wonder where to find the PDA of a missing soldier. PDA in this case is a personal matter of an amnestied, or rather, a "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 separate documents were not compiled at all. In all other cases, duplicate cards must be kept in the FSB archives.
Here's how to find a soldier who died in the Second World War. We really hope that our advice has helped you in at least some way.