Edition of the Record Book of the Chief of Staff of the Chief of the General Army Office from May 1938 to 31.12.1943 and the Memoranda of the Director of the Army`s Armaments Effort and the Commander of the Replacement Army Colonel General Friedrich Fromm 1938-1943

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Bernhard R. Kroener
• Subject Area: Modern and Contemporary History
• Term: from 2006 to 2018
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 30329342

The objective of the preparations and plans of the edition project (sighting, transcription, collection and the development of more general editing principles) that started in September 2007 is the edition of a central military-historical source from the period between 1938 and 1943. A further funding is requested for the completion of the project to ensure the historical-critical commentary of this source and the associated development of the material for further research.The 23 handwritten diary volumes provide a unique and intimate insight into the civil and military leadership of the warring `Third Reich´. Due to the remote location at the Imperial War Museum, London, this source was long overlooked and its importance not recognized. Only through the research of the applicant in the context of the DFG-funded biography of Colonel General Friedrich Fromm (Kroener, Der starke Mann im Heimatkriegsgebiet, 2005) the scientific community became aware of the record book. The state of this document, it was written mostly in a difficult shorthand and of four different diary recorders, but above all, its source value, by the authenticity of the entries far above the comparable sources such as the so-called Halder diary (Halder, Kriegstagebuch, 3 volumes, 1962-1964), make the transcription, commentary and publication to an urgent desideratum of the historiography of World War II. Together with the most important memoranda of General Fromm, who early predicted the collapse of the arms and the drying up of the material and human resources of Germany, the edition will make an outstanding source group for organizing the preparation for war and warfare. She will be provided with a critical and a content annotation system, supplemented by short biographies and an extensive names and places index and a list of abbreviations. The edition will give new impulses to the history of World War II and thus a previously neglected area.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants