Update: As of 6 October 2022, the database is more-or-less complete (wth ongoing corrections and improvements) and fully open to visitors, offering monthly OBs with unit locations, plus month-by-month histories of more than 700 divisions. It's not perfect, but given the lack of reliable information for some periods during the war, it's difficult to see how any German OB of this nature could be flawless.

As of 6 August 2022, my experimental, searchable database of WWII German OBs and divisions is open for public preview and comment.

It's available here: German OB database

At this point, other than the usual tinkering, I think I've finished the database structure as well as the code for my data entry and editing interface, output and display, and search functionality. After entering data for 100+ divisions, I believe I have a decent handle on the overall process involved in putting this material online.

Now it's time to pause, take a breath, and consider where I go from here. It's a long road from 100+ to the ultimate destination of having ALL the WWII German divisions in the online database. Whether or not I continue on that road depends in part on response to the preview. Most of this data is already available in whole or part in assorted formats in various documents, books, and websites.

However, no source seems to provide exactly what I want. What's that? I want complete division-level orders of battle for German ground forces in all theaters throughout the war, including approximate location of each unit. And I want it all laid out neatly on one page, so I don't need to click on each army group to see its armies, then click on each army to see its corps, then click on each corps to see its divisions. Tessin's books contain most of that data, but it's fragmented, disconnected, and not fully integrated into monthly OBs, requiring far too much paging through multiple volumes. Researchers using Tessin need to tediously piece together orders of battle HQ by HQ or—like me—division by division. Similarly, websites such as Lexicon der Wehrmacht contain tons of data, but don't really deal directly with OBs. It's especially difficult to find complete OBs showing unit locations. (See my survey of strengths and weaknesses of Tessin and other resources for this material.)

So I intend to focus on that gap in the various sources, building complete wartime OBs at the division level with unit locations. I won't be working with units smaller than divisions. Likewise, I won't be working with components of divisions or TOE information, because that's already available, and it's not something I'm interested in including at this time. But, when complete, I should have fairly accurate, fairly detailed orders of battle (including approximate location for each unit) that can be instantly generated at the click of a link, as well as month-by-month unit histories.

Of course, if it looks like no one finds my approach useful, I might not bother to do all the work to enter the remaining hundreds of German divisions into the database. I might end up just doing a quick, dirty, and partial job for my own use, without bothering to clean it up for presentation on the Web.

Please → email me ← with comments, suggestions, corrections, etc. Thanks.

Notes

Here are important points to keep in mind about this project.

Update, 22 October 2022: Added Italian RSI divisions formed, equipped, and trained in Germany, then deployed in northern Italy within German chain of command.

● This database is based on information compiled and published by Georg Tessin in his multi-volume Verbande und Truppen der Deutschen Wehrmacht und Waffen SS series.

● The data here is limited to divisions (excluding smaller units such as brigades, regiments, etc) of maneuver forces and their chains of command. Units include infantry, armor, etc, but exclude flak, engineers, etc.

● Due to the nature of Tessin's work and availability of primary sources (or lack thereof), the exact date of each month/year record varies.

● Each OB is only a snapshot; the organization of German forces was in a constant state of flux almost every day during the war.

● Because granularity is monthly, not daily, multiple changes in HQ/location could happen within a given month but not be shown.

● Due to varying chains of command, different divisions in the same location could be subordinated to different HQs.

● Tessin seldom distinguishes among army corps, motorized corps, panzer corps, gebirgs corps, etc within the divisional "Unterstellung" listings. He just shows "III" or "XXXXVIII" or whatever. I try to identify each corps more precisely according to its actual nomenclature for any given date.

● German terms/abbreviations as used by Tessin have usually been retained, but in some cases have been slightly edited for greater consistency, ease of access, and/or clarity for an English-speaking audience. For example, Luftwaffen-Feld-Division 4 is represented as 4. Luftwaffen-Feld Division. Occasionally my English has collided with Tessin's German with uncertain results.

● In many cases, help for unfamiliar German terms/abbreviations (or my bastardized versions thereof) can be revealed by hovering the cursor over the unfamiliar text.

● Tessin's volumes, while representing the seminal work on German units and OBs during WWII, are not perfect. Given the magnitude of the German armed forces during the war and the massive amount of work required to compile data about those forces, it shouldn't be surprising to discover Verbande und Truppen contains errors, omissions (such as 7th Flieger Division), oddities, and inconsistencies.

● As much as possible, errors have been (and are being) corrected, and internal inconsistencies within Tessin's work have been (and are being) resolved. For this purpose I mostly rely on the original German wartime Lagekarten and "schematische kriegsgliederungen," plus a few works such as those by Mehner, Schmitz, Schramm, etc. (See below for sources.) Also, many thanks to Leo Niehorster for his compendium of Tessin errata.

● This experimental database is far from perfect. Nevertheless, I hope it will prove useful for anyone interested in German units and orders of battle.

● If you find it useful, or if you discover an error or omission, please email me.

Methodology and error-checking

I've been spending a great deal of time going through Tessin's volumes page by page, locating entries for divisions. For each division I enter the tabular information shown under the "Unterstellung" heading. Depending on the division, this could be just a couple of lines of data, or multiple pages. In general, each line shows the date (month and year), corps, army, army group, front (usually), and location (usually), sometimes with a note shoehorned into one or more of the columns. All of that goes into the database. As each division arrives there, it becomes available to display as divisional history (which looks very much like Tessin's Unterstellung table) and as part of monthly orders of battle, and it becomes available through the search routine.

For each division, I also check the corrections shown in the addenda at the back of each Tessin volume, and Leo Niehorster's invaluable compilation of additional Tessin errata.

Despite availability of that errata, errors and omissions remain in Tessin's work. In particular, the chains of command in his divisional entries don't always match up. For example, the entry for 1st Division in January 1940 might show it in III Corps in 4th Army. However, the entry for 2nd Division in January 1940 might show it in III Corps in 5th Army. That's the same corps in two different armies at the same time. Sometimes that can be explained by differences in the exact date during the month from which the underlying data was derived. On the other hand, it's surprisingly common to discover Tessin has mixed up his Roman numerals. Sometimes his divisional entries show LLL Corps when it should be III Corps, or XXIX Corps when it should be XXIV Corps, or XXXXI Corps when it should be XXXI Corps, and so on.

There are also discrepancies in other parts of the Tessin volumes. For example, the entry for 3rd Panzer Division shows it was in XXXX Corps with 6th Army in April 1944. However, the entry for XXXX Corps shows it was part of 8th Army—not 6th Army—on that date, and the entry for 8th Army on that date confirms it contained XXXX Corps with 3rd Panzer Division.

The bottom line is that these kinds of internal inconsistencies won't be immediately apparent when looking at a single divisional entry. However, as divisions are added to the database and viewed within orders of battle for specific dates, the discrepancies mount up. In fact, it's almost impossible to process a division without discovering at least one contradiction. In the case of 3rd Panzer Division, in the context of the full OB for April 1944 it becomes apparent that the division could not have been with 6th Army at that time, because multiple other divisions are shown in the same corps but in 8th Army. Those kinds of internal inconsistencies need to be identified and resolved. In many cases that can only be done by investigating other sources, such as the original OKH OBs or maps such as the Lage Ost series. (See below for principal sources.)

All this prompted me to add another module to my data handling code. Now, every time I complete data entry for a division, the error-checking module allows me to automatically see if the fresh divisional info introduced any new inconsistencies. Similarly, I can run the module to scan the entire database looking for discrepancies. This code won't find every problem (and it certainly won't resolve them!), but it goes a long way toward identifying problems introduced by the original documents, by Tessin's work, by typesetters for the books, or my own sloppy data entry.

Naturally, I try to resolve every discrepancy I can find. This can become a frustrating exercise in push-me-pull-you. If I can't reach a resolution, I flag the entry with "???", meaning something's askew, but I don't have better information. Right now you can find about a half dozen of those triple question marks when perusing the data.

In the OBs, I also flag remaining internal inconsistencies related to chains of command. In the example of 3rd Panzer Division (above), XXXX Corps would have shown up in two places in the OB, once with 6th Army (with 3rd Panzer) and once with 8th Army (with other divisions), except that I corrected the error. Had I not corrected it, anyone viewing the order of battle for April 1944 would have seen two separate XXXX Corps entries, each in lovely orange text (orange for caution) and each marked with a red asterisk with the notation of "Possible internal inconsistency." Some of those inconsistencies remain lurking and visible in the OBs. Feel free to help me resolve them!

Finally, a word about perfection: My database will not attain that lofty goal. Every OB resource I know about contains imperfections. That includes Tessin, Niehorster, Lexikon der Wehrmacht, etc. My project won't be perfect either, but I hope when completed it turns out to be pretty darn good. At a bare minimum, I'll display OBs the way I want to see them.

Principal sources for German OB data

The bulk of this database is built around Georg Tessin's Verbande und Truppen der deutschen Wehrmacht und Waffen SS series of books.

The following sources proved useful for clarifying, correcting, and adding material.

● Kursietis, Andris J. Wehrmacht at War, 1939-1945: Units and Commanders of the German Ground Forces during World War II. Soesterberg, Nether: Aspekt, 1999

● McCroden, William T. and Thomas Nutter. German Ground Forces of World War II: Complete Orders of Battle for Army Groups, Armies, Army Corps, and Other Commands of the Wehrmacht and Waffen SS, September 1, 1939, to May 8, 1945. El Dorado Hills, CA: Savas Beatie, 2019

● Mehner, Kurt (ed). Geheimen Tagesberichte der Deutschen Wehrmachtfuhrung series

● Miller, James Arnold. Hitler's Orders of Battle: The Key Commanders, Headquarters, Divisions, and European Allies. Indianapolis, IN: James Arnold Miller, 2008

● Schmitz, P., K-J. Thies, G. Wegmann, and C. Zweng. Die Deutschen Divisionen, 1939-45 series

● Schramm, Percy Ernest (ed). Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht series

● Thies, Klaus-Jurgen. Der Zweite Weltkrieg im Kartenbild series

● Various. Germany and the Second World War series (translated from German)

● Lexicon der Wehrmacht website

● Dr Leo Niehorster's World War II Armed Forces website (including Tessin errata)

● Digitized copies of original German wartime OBs and maps obtained from US National Archives and German Bundesarchivs either directly or via third parties such as Digital History Archive and WW2 Archives


→ See also: German OBs, Georg Tessin, and me

→ See also: Sample digitized copy of original German OB document

→ See also: Sample digitized copy of original German Lage Ost map

→ See also: my Armies of the Second World War database