Awar diary is a regularly updated official record kept bymilitary units of their activities during wartime. The purpose of these diaries is to both record information which can later be used by the military to improve its training and tactics as well as to generate a detailed record of units' activities for future use by historians. War diaries are focused on the administration and operations of the unit they cover, but may also contain information about individual personnel.[1]
War diaries (German:Kriegstagebuch, pluralKriegstagebücher) were invented by thePrussian Army. On 22 April 1850, thePrussian Minister of War,August von Stockhausen, ordered that all commanders of major units should keep war diaries. All significant military actions, relocations, important messages and orders, casualties, material losses, reinforcements etc. were to be recorded. Subsequent regulations of 1870 inPrussia, of 1895 and 1916 in theGerman Empire, and of 1940 inNazi Germany were largely identical to the Prussian 1850 regulations.[2]
TheBritish Army first required that its units keep war diaries in 1907 as a means of preventing its mistakes of theSecond Boer War from being repeated.[3][a] This practice was maintained during theFirst World War[5][6] and beyond,[7][8] and units operating in war zones continue to maintain such diaries.[3] The war diaries kept by Australian military units are normally maintained by the unit's adjutant or intelligence officer and contain a regularly updated narrative of its activities as well as copies of reports, messages received and maps.[9]
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World War IIWar Diaries from units of theUS Navy (including all ships) andMarine Corps were declassified on December 31, 2012, by theOffice of the Chief of Naval Operations (OCNO) and made available to the public through theNational Archives and Records Administration (NARA). These war diaries are part of a larger collection of records from the OCNO at NARA, currently spanning 1875 to 2006.[10]
A centenary program highlighting those records created 100 years ago, why they exist and how we can help make these essential records available for research purposes.
Find out how you can find WW2 War Diaries at The National Archives and use them to find out what your family did in WW2
Unlike First World War [British Army] unit war diaries, which are contained within a single redord series (WO 95), Second World War diaries are found within nineteen series.
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