27
My answer consists of three parts. I start with World War II because more (individual) records are available and I assume people are more interested in it. The second part focusses on World War I and possible research difficulties. The last part covers projects and institutions providing e.g. information on burial sites and memorials of both wars.
World War ...
10
As @TomH indirectly suggests, it is possible to request your father's Service Records from the UK's Ministry of Defence. See https://www.gov.uk/requests-for-personal-data-and-service-records, in particular the section "Service records of deceased Service personnel".
Obtaining Service Records has a bad reputation because of the time it takes and the ...
7
The German Red Cross also maintains a WWII tracing service that works independantly from the ICRC services. They have their own records (I confirmed this via email), which indicates that they may even in some cases have information that the ICRC doesn't.
7
I understand it as follows: He arrived in Buchenwald 26 January 1945 ("26.1.45 eingel.") and was send to Sachsenhausen on 6 February 1945. This is however not verifiable just from the card. The transport might not have happened.
You could send an inquiry to the memorial site of the former Buchenwald Concentration Camp for additional information. You could ...
7
I can confirm that the text on both cards is indeed in German. Your first card is dated to 1920, the second one seems to have been stamped by the post office in 1917. As far as I know Sütterlin was only developed in 1911 and taught in schools from 1915 on, so the people writing these cards would have learned another form of Kurrent rather than specifically ...
7
This article describes the incident:
http://aircrewremembered.com/roy-arnold.html
and leads me to search for "Oblt Walter Schneider" which comes up with another website or two.
https://airpages.ru/eng/lw/fw190a1_1.shtml
(Fw 190A-1, Werk Nr 027, "Yellow 1" of JG 26, of Oblt Walter Schneider in November 1941, which showed nineteen victory ...
6
The International Red Cross holds a lot of information about POW's from WW2. They are currently digitising all their records. At the moment you have to make a written application for them to conduct a search and as a result the response from them can take some time. I did some research on my Father-in-law with them. It took about 3 months from when I applied ...
6
The "Berlin Airlift Historical Foundation" have a website with a fair amount of information. That includes "The Men Who Participated". That has a list of units that were involved, only some of which have crew lists linked. Fortunately, one of them is for the 12th Troop Carrier Squadron, which includes Robert S. Whitehead among its members.
The 12th Troop ...
6
The Delaware Military History organization may have some useful material, including pictures and camp activity reports and newsletters.
The National Archives and Record Administration (NARA) has basic records of German POW's held in the US. When the soldier was repatriated, their personnel record was given to the country for which they fought. Within that ...
6
Service records for those who served during the 20th century are held by the National Personnel Records Center, Military Personnel Records (NPRC-MPR) (part of the US National Archives in St Louis).
Records are turned over to the National Archives after a certain period of time -- this is sometimes called a a rolling window. For military records, they ...
5
In the post Meaning of GO 33 WD 45 on a WWII Veteran’s Discharge on the blog Tribute to an 82nd Airborne Veteran, Jeff Clark breaks it down for us as follows:
GO 33 40 is General Order 33 and General Order 40
WD 45 is War Department 1945
Putting it all together so far, it says:
“General Order 33 and General Order 40 published by the War ...
5
A search of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission grave locator for service members from WW2 who served with the Lancashire Fusiliers with a rank of Corporal yields 103 records. If your granddad is in the database, having his military service number would help you distinguish his entry from another service member with the same name.
Do you have any ...
5
Note: this answer pertains to the question as it was originally asked, and not necessarily to its edited form. The question was how to find any surviving relatives of Phillip Post (who came from Eltville near Frankfurt around 1860) who might have served in WWII.
The usual recommendation for studying your family history is to start with yourself and to work ...
5
Your best place to start would be Steve Morse's Dachau record search, and see if you can find your Great Uncle.
Morse's Dachau intro page gives a good overview of the extent of Dachau records available. Also see Dachau Concentration Camp Records on JewishGen which provides additional information about the records available.
5
Please see my answer on How to find information on German soldiers from World War I and World War II?. The Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt, Deutsche Dienststelle für die Benachrichtigung der nächsten Angehörigen von Gefallenen der ehemaligen deutschen Wehrmacht) has also the records for members of the Luftwaffe. Additional information on officers might also be ...
5
From Ancestry.com I can see that your great grandfather certainly registered for the draft during World War 2:
These details:
Name: Robert Seaborne Whitehead
Age: 50
Birth Date: 22 Jun 1892
Residence Year: 1942
Residence: Ft Worth, Texas, USA
are from:
The National Archives at St. Louis; St. Louis, Missouri; Draft
Registration Cards for Fourth ...
5
If I am correct the Charles Fredrick Evans as required by you is listed as a Gunner in the Royal Artillery. His service number was 1801591 and you could follow him up on line via Forces war records, if required for a fee. He is also listed under find a grave index, death 28 Feb 1945 and Listed with his mother Emma Elizabeth Evans, aged 42, when he was aged 7,...
5
The German War Graves Commission (Volksbund) is the authority that maintains a database of German war graves (especially World War I and World War II).
The only mandatory information you need for a search is the surname. (I would always start with a broad search and limit it down by given name or year of death later. Don’t search by date of birth or ...
5
The collection on Ancestry is just the draft cards from the Fourth Registration (April 1942). The US had seven draft registration periods for WWII service.
This is from the Fold3 blog:
There were seven draft registration periods in the United States for World War II service. The first draft registration was held on October 16, 1940—before the United ...
5
Library and Archives Canada hold Canadian military service records for World War 2; there will certainly be a record of your grandfather's enlistment and discharge -- armed forces the world over are extraordinarily keen on keeping records of their soldiers.
As he survived the war, his records are subject to access restrictions and not available online. The ...
4
According to "Tracing Your Naval Ancestors" (by Simon Fowler, Pen & Sword, 2011) from 1921, officers on RFA ships were ranked as Merchant Navy officers. Before that most were Royal Naval Reserve officers. For merchant navy officers, you should start with The National Archives guide "Looking for records of an officer in the Merchant Navy".
Not a lot of ...
4
Camp records are free on Fold3. You need to sign up to view scans, but it's definitely worth a try. I found a Buchenwald card of a remote uncle there myself.
4
The German Red Cross still maintains a WWII tracing service that would seem to apply to your case (my translation):
You're looking for relatives in relation to the second world war? For
over 65 years, the DRK tracing service has been conducting investigations
concerning POWs and civil prisoners, missing Wehrmacht soldiers,
civilians abducted and ...
4
You may want to submit a Request for personal data and service records to the Ministry of Defence.
I does not sound like the The National Archives (TNA) has complete Royal Naval Reserve (RNR) records which may explain your issue.
4
What about scanning the record book for public access and returning the book to Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt), a federal organization maintaining records on servicemen? They can use the content to provide information to interested ancestors and other parties (please see also my answers on How to find information on German soldiers from World War I and World ...
4
There is no single best way to do this but in my research I have come across some similar situations including for some close family as well as had people reach out to me trying to establish a connection to someone who 'may' be related to me.
It is not clear exactly what you are hoping to gain from making the connection, and in whatever approach you take I ...
4
In looking for the answer to this I saw noted several times that there is not a ton of documentation of the Rosenstrasse / Rosenstraße event that survived the war and there is limited resources that might list names. I was unable to find a 'complete' list.
Nathan Stolzfus seems to be the most cited author on Rosenstrasse and two of his works have popped out ...
Only top voted, non community-wiki answers of a minimum length are eligible