My Great Grandfather fought on the German side in WW2. We know he fought on the eastern front but handed himself over to US forces at some point later in the war (he didn't want to go to war in the first place). if anyone could direct me to where I could get online records or info that would be great! thankyou in advance.
Not an historian here, but I did some research about my grandfather who fought an the German side, too.
The national archive in Berlin offers research for relatives of Wehrmacht or SS soldiers. They took this task from the WAST, an office which was initiiated to research the missing soldiers of WW II. You can contact the national archive via www.bundesarchiv.de.
It's not completely free and it can take a lot of time (I waited 2 years for 4 pages of results). I personally found it still worth it. Cost me €16.98.
And since I'm doing some genealogy research as well, I found that ancestry.com seems to have access to US military files, too. But since I didn't need that much information I didn't use it and can't say any more about it. Downside of the digital access of Ancestry is in any case, that it's NOT free.
Long story short, I'd go for the Bundesarchiv, but you need some patience there. A lot of patience, actually.