Dear Historians,
I am looking for a WW1 war diary by prussian general Otto von Below in its original version, but I am a complete stranger to historical document search. After searching university libraries and specialized bookshops, the closest I got was a reference in the book "Capturing Hill 70: Canada's Forgotten Battle of the First World War" by Douglas E. Delaney and Serge Marc Durflinger, at page 202
So, to my understanding no publishing of the diary in german exists, and the only way to access the document is to contact the german federal archives.
My question to you is: how do I continue from this point on? Can any of you with some experience searching state archives give me some advice? Thank you in advance!
Text below is just to provide a little context:
A friend of mine recently retired from work and is writing a book about the history of those who were drafted during WW1 from his homevillage in the island of Sardinia in Italy, and sent to fight to the Austro-Italian border. Since he is in his 60's and not very accustomed to digital search, he asked me to help him find the original version of Otto von Below's diary, after he read a book based on the diary : "Caporetto dalla parte del vincitore :il generale Otto von Below e il suo diario inedito, Mursia, 1992, ISBN 88-425-1156-0" by Francesco Fadini. (translation: "Caporetto from the side of the winner :general Otto von Below and his unpuplished diary" ). Unfortunately the book is an italian translation of some extracts of the original diary, and missing some war phases my friend belives are reported in the original version of the diary. If you can help il would mean a lot to him.
Hi there,
I think the document you're looking for is 'Der italienische Feldzug 1917.- Ausarbeitung des Otto v. Belows', which is listed on the website of the Bundesarchiv. However, it doesn't have its own document number and the Bundesarchiv directory doesn't say which archive it's stored in, although it's probably with von Below's other documents in the military archive in Freiburg. It's probably worth contacting the Archive directly here to ask about the document. The entry also says it's handwritten, so bear in mind that even if you do find the document or get photos of it, you may need to take it to a professional for translation, as older handwriting tends to be quite tricky.
Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv (BA/MA), N87/61
According to the Bundesarchiv "search" engine "invenio", the document is in Freiburg (Benutzungsort) Generally BA/MA means the Bundesarchiv in Freiburg since that contains archives from the German military.
It is a "Nachlass" (hence the "N" in N87) which can loosely be translated as "archive collections of documents and papers left behind by a noteworthy person". In this case a General.
The "/61" in "N87/61" means the document is in box/folder "61". Invenio says the Otto von Below "Nachlass" consist of 76 boxes/folders. Such a box/folder may contain a single letter, or 500 document pages. Since there are 76 boxes/folders, a precise citation like "N87/61" is nice.
One can either engage a private researcher to copy and mail the "Kriegstagebuch" (KTB) or visit the Freiburg Bundesarchiv directly. In the latter case, read this: https://www.bundesarchiv.de/EN/Navigation/Use/Visit-On-Site/visit-on-side.html
It probably would take a couple of hours to shoot 200-300 pictures of the KTB. So by pre-ordering the N87/61 box/folder before coming, one could just fly in and out the same day.
It is possible that the KTB is a personal diary and therefore entirely hand written. However, it may consist or at least contain copies of the official unit KTB's and these tend to be typed in the later half of the war (at least in my limited experience). Many officers stashed copies of their unit's KTB and other such documents to aid them for their future unit histories.