Information technology opens up enormous opportunities for us. Now we can find a person via the Internet without leaving home. Some people use this chance to find out at least something about the participants in the war of 1941-1945. After all, how many destinies were then lost, missing. Today, relatives are trying to restore information and find out the details of what happened. Find a veteran sooner Patriotic War based on the surname or other information it was very difficult, but now it is quite possible. There are many electronic resources and databases for this. We will write about them below.
Where can I find information about participants in World War II?
Get ready for a difficult task to solve. Below we list the largest electronic resources, created with government support and central archives:
- “Memorial” is a project that is a generalized repository. There are more than 33 million records about the fate of soldiers and burial places. A search on the site is carried out both by a person’s last name and by any other indicators. You can indicate your year of birth, place or rank. You can additionally use the " Advanced Search" By default, the system will work with summary records compiled for each person from available documents;
- “Memory of the People” is another project dedicated to the heroes of the Second World War. To search, you need to enter your full name in the line located at the top of the page " Heroes of War" You can also use the following points: “ Combat operations», « Military graves», « Parts documents" In them you can see the addresses of burials and the names of fallen soldiers, material about military operations, the fate of its participants, etc.
Both sites are easy to use. A colossal number of unique documents are stored here in electronic form, which are not found anywhere else.
Search for WWII veterans by awards
The electronic archive “Feat of the People” contains information about more than 6 million awards issued for the capture, defense, and liberation of cities and territories.
You can search both by full name and by dates and names of orders. And if you have any documents on hand, you can enter text from them into the appropriate fields using the “ Advanced Search" Then the resource will issue all award sheets and orders in which this set of proposals appears.
You can also use the portal “About Awards.ru”. It contains more than 20 million awards records.
List of military archives and departments
There is an option to go directly to military storage facilities and departments and inquire there:
In addition, projects on which you can read old wartime newspapers. They often posted texts with photographs about the achievements of our troops at the front, in order to raise patriotism among the people, and listed the names of heroes and leaders:
You may have to spend a lot of time, but the more resources you visit, the more applications you leave, the more likely you will be successful.
How to find those killed or missing in the war of 1941-1945?
Here we list resources where you can find out about the fate of people left on the battlefields:
- Project "Archive Battalion" created with the aim of restoring information about participants in the wars of the 20th century. You can leave a request on the website with a request to conduct research on the exploits of your hero, where and how he fought and died. It is also possible to contact the office directly to the employees. The address is here;
- Book of memory "Immortal Regiment". The platform allows you to obtain information about Muscovites, both those who returned home and those who died;
- Electronic memorial “Remember About” is a social site for those who are trying to preserve the memory of relatives and friends who participated in the Second World War. You can create a page in memory of a veteran here, tell his story, publish photographs and documents. And also do a search;
- On site
You tell me: “Why look?
Those who were killed here have long disappeared,
Those who could have been waiting for them have also left,
And they were all forgotten a long time ago...”
From the song of the search engines
Almost every family in our country has relatives who went missing during the Great Patriotic War. Some scattered information is kept in the family, some still have photographs. But when you see the name of a loved one in a report from the Memorial base, for example, for some reason you more clearly imagine a train under fire, trenches... And it seems that if you find out at least something else, your soldier will not be so lonely in his unknown grave . And you hope that the soldiers who have not returned will not be left without prayers.
Foma told about where and how to look for information about the burial place of a soldier of the Great Patriotic War Dmitry Alexandrovich Belov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Director of the Research Center for Regional History of the Volgograd State Academy of Postgraduate Education, Vice-President of the Battle of Stalingrad International Charitable Foundation.
Step 1. Where to start
The fastest way to find your relative who died in the Great Patriotic War is the generalized Memorial data bank, the database of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO):
To do this:
At this stage of the search, to begin with, a last name, first name, patronymic, year of birth, preferably a title is enough. If he is Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, then, of course, it will be more difficult. You have to be persistent to make sure that this is exactly the person you need, you will need details - full name of wife, mother, name of the village, city where he was called from, place of birth (in accordance with the administrative-territorial division of the USSR in the pre-war years - approx. ed.).
It is worth paying special attention to the fourth point. There are some really stupid spelling mistakes in the database. My great-grandfather's name was Andrei Kirillovich. I wrote “Kirillovich” like a normal person with two letters, and then I thought that not everyone knows how to spell Kirillovich...
Kirillovich typed with one “l” and immediately found the burial place. Also Filippovich - maybe Filippovich, and with one “p”, and so on. It is also better to try to change the letters in both the last name and first name in case they were written by an illiterate person or the original document is difficult to read. Such moments must be taken into account.
Ideally, the result of your search should be a document about the burial place of a relative and information in which military unit (army, division or regiment) he fought.
If there is no information, one can hope that the search teams that are looking for and burying the remains of soldiers will find something. If the search engines managed to find someone, they contact the military registration and enlistment office and look for relatives themselves.
But you can continue the search on your own. In this case, it is necessary to collect the maximum possible amount of information in order to begin a qualitatively new stage of the search.
What can help us with this?
Step 2. Gather additional information
Have the letters survived?
The most important thing in letters is the number of the field postal station (FPS) on the stamp of the envelope. You can use it to determine the number of a division, regiment, etc.
A powerful resource: a lot of documents on military topics, memoirs, collections. If you know the division number and the battle area, then you can at least general outline find description.
Database "Feat of the People"
TsAMO project.
This is a database where there is information about soldiers awarded medals. The database is not yet complete; not all documents have been scanned yet.
This resource has several hospital databases. Dial the hospital number, press Enter and see which division it served.
And there are many more reference books on types of troops, shoulder straps, and weapons.
But the most valuable thing is on Soldat.ru forum http://soldat.ru/forum/
If you register on it, you can get advice from completely unfamiliar historians, specialists, anyone who is interested in searching, and military registration and enlistment office employees.
To register, at the top of this site (see the lower right corner in the picture above), you need to click the “Registration” button. Next you need to fill out the registration form.
Then create a topic (it’s better to name it briefly, for example, “No.__-th Infantry Division. Looking for a relative”). After this, your request will be able to be read by anyone who visits this site. Don't hesitate! There will be enough such strangers and caring people. Everyone will help you with the information they have. Some will answer, advise, consult, others will recommend sites, scan the documents you need, excerpts from books, etc.
Other resources
There are many more resources that publish interviews with veterans and biographies. But it is worth considering that these sources, as a rule, do not represent historical value either for the researcher or for those who want to use this material in their search.
You tell me: “Why look?
Those who were killed here have long disappeared,
Those who could have been waiting for them have also left,
And all of them have long been forgotten..."
From the song of the search engines
Almost every family in our country has relatives who went missing during the Great Patriotic War. Some scattered information is kept in the family, some still have photographs. But when you see the name of a loved one in a report from the Memorial base, for example, for some reason you more clearly imagine a train under fire, trenches... And it seems that if you find out at least something else, your soldier will not be so lonely in his unknown grave . And you hope that the soldiers who have not returned will not be left without prayers.Foma told about where and how to look for information about the burial place of a soldier of the Great Patriotic War Dmitry Alexandrovich Belov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, Director of the Research Center for Regional History of the Volgograd State Academy of Postgraduate Education, Vice-President of the Battle of Stalingrad International Charitable Foundation.
Step 1. Where to start
The fastest way to find your relative who died in the Great Patriotic War is the generalized Memorial data bank, the database of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO):
To do this:
At this stage of the search, to begin with, a last name, first name, patronymic, year of birth, preferably a title is enough. If he is Ivan Ivanovich Ivanov, then, of course, it will be more difficult. You have to be persistent to make sure that this is exactly the person you need, you will need details - full name of wife, mother, name of the village, city where he was called from, place of birth (in accordance with the administrative-territorial division of the USSR in the pre-war years - approx. ed.).It is worth paying special attention to the fourth point. There are some really stupid spelling mistakes in the database. My great-grandfather's name was Andrei Kirillovich. I wrote “Kirillovich” like a normal person with two letters, and then I thought that not everyone knows how to spell Kirillovich...
Kirillovich typed with one “l” and immediately found the burial place. Also Filippovich - maybe Filippovich, and with one “p”, and so on. Such points must be taken into account.
Ideally, the result of your search should be a document about the burial place of a relative and information in which military unit (army, division or regiment) he fought.
If there is no information, one can hope that the search teams that are looking for and burying the remains of soldiers will find something. If the search engines managed to find someone, they contact the military registration and enlistment office and look for relatives themselves.
But you can continue the search on your own. In this case, it is necessary to collect the maximum possible amount of information in order to begin a qualitatively new stage of the search.
What can help us with this?
Step 2. Gather additional information
Have the letters survived?
The most important thing in letters is the number of the field postal station (FPS) on the stamp of the envelope. You can use it to determine the number of a division, regiment, etc.
A powerful resource: a lot of documents on military topics, memoirs, collections. If the division number and the fighting area are known, then you can at least find a description in general terms.
Database "Feat of the People"
TsAMO project.
This is a database where there is information about soldiers awarded medals.
This resource has several hospital databases. Dial the hospital number, press Enter and see which division it served.
And there are many more reference books on types of troops, shoulder straps, and weapons.
But the most valuable thing is on Soldat.ru forum http://soldat.ru/forum
If you register on it, you can get advice from completely unfamiliar historians, specialists, anyone who is interested in searching, and military registration and enlistment office employees.
To register, at the top of this site (see the lower right corner in the picture above), you need to click the “Registration” button. Next you need to fill out the registration form.
Then create a topic (it’s better to name it briefly, for example, “No.__-th Infantry Division. Looking for a relative”). After this, your request will be able to be read by anyone who visits this site. Don't hesitate! There will be enough such strangers and caring people. Everyone will help you with the information they have. Some will answer, advise, consult, others will recommend sites, scan the documents you need, excerpts from books, etc.
Other resources
There are many more resources that publish interviews with veterans and biographies. But it is worth considering that these sources, as a rule, do not represent historical value either for the researcher or for those who want to use this material in their search.
We have been keeping the memory of the Great War of the 20th century and its heroes for more than 70 years. We pass it on to our children and grandchildren, trying not to lose a single fact or surname. Almost every family was affected by this event; many fathers, brothers, husbands never returned. Today we can find information about them thanks to the painstaking work of military archives staff and volunteers who devote their free time to searching for soldiers’ graves. How to do this, how to find a WWII participant by last name, information about his awards, military ranks, place of death? We could not ignore such an important topic, we hope that we can help those who are looking and want to find.
Losses in the Great Patriotic War
It is still unknown exactly how many people left us during this great human tragedy. After all, the counting did not begin immediately; only in 1980, with the advent of glasnost in the USSR, historians, politicians, and archive staff were able to begin official work. Until this time, scattered data that were beneficial at that time were received.
- After celebrating Victory Day in 1945, J.V. Stalin said that we had buried 7 million Soviet citizens. He spoke, in his opinion, about everyone, both about those who died during the battle, and about those who were taken prisoner by the German occupiers. But he missed a lot, did not say about the rear employees who stood at the machine from morning until night, falling dead from exhaustion. I forgot about the sentenced saboteurs, traitors to the motherland, ordinary residents and siege survivors of Leningrad who died in small villages; missing persons. Unfortunately, they can be listed for a long time.
- Later L.I. Brezhnev provided different information, he reported 20 million dead.
Today, thanks to the decoding of secret documents and search work, the numbers are becoming real. Thus, you can see the following picture:
- Combat losses received directly at the front during battles amount to about 8,860,400 people.
- Non-combat losses (from illnesses, wounds, accidents) - 6,885,100 people.
However, these figures do not yet correspond to complete reality. War, and even this kind of war, is not only the destruction of the enemy at the cost of one’s own life. These are broken families - unborn children. This is a huge loss of the male population, thanks to which it will not soon be possible to restore the balance necessary for good demography.
These are diseases, hunger in the post-war years and death from it. This is rebuilding the country again, again in many ways, at the cost of people’s lives. All of them also need to be taken into account when doing calculations. All of them are victims of terrible human vanity, whose name is war.
How to find a participant in the Great Patriotic War 1941 - 1945 by last name?
There is no better memory for the stars of victory than the desire of the future generation to know. The desire to save information for others, to avoid such repetition. How to find a WWII participant by last name, where to find possible information about grandfathers and great-grandfathers, fathers who took part in battles, knowing their last name? Especially for this purpose, there are now electronic repositories that everyone can access.
- obd-memorial.ru - here contains official data containing reports of units about losses, funerals, trophy cards, as well as information about rank, status (died, was killed or disappeared, where), scanned documents.
- moypolk.ru is a unique resource containing information about home front workers. The very ones without whom we would not have heard important word"Victory". Thanks to this site, many have already been able to find or help find lost people.
The work of these resources is not only to search for great people, but also to collect information about them. If you have any, please report it to the administrators of these sites. In this way, we will do a great common cause - we will preserve memory and history.
Archive of the Ministry of Defense: search by last name of WWII participants
Another one is the main, central, largest project - https://archive.mil.ru/. The documents preserved there are mostly isolated and remained intact due to the fact that they were taken to the Orenburg region.
Over the years of work, CA staff have created an excellent reference apparatus showing the contents of archival accumulations and funds. Now its goal is to provide people with access to possible documents through electronic computing technology. Thus, a website has been launched where you can try to find a military man who participated in the Second World War, knowing his last name. How to do this?
- On the left side of the screen, find the “memory of the people” tab.
- Indicate his full name.
- The program will give you the available information: date of birth, awards, scanned documents. Everything that is in the files for a given person.
- You can set a filter on the right, selecting only the sources you want. But it's better to choose everything.
- On this site it is possible to look at military operations on a map and the path of the unit in which the hero served.
This is a unique project in its essence. Such a volume of data collected and digitized from all existing and available sources: card indexes, e-books memory, medical battalion documents and command personnel reference books are no longer there. In truth, as long as such programs and the people who provide them exist, the memory of the people will be eternal.
If you didn’t find the right person there, don’t despair, there are other sources, maybe they’re not as large-scale, but that doesn’t make them any less informative. Who knows in which folder the information you need might be lying around.
Participants of the Second World War: search by last name, archive and awards
Where else can you look? There are more narrowly focused repositories, for example:
- dokst.ru. As we said, those who were captured also became victims of this terrible war. Their fate may be displayed on foreign websites like this one. Here in the database there is everything about Russian prisoners of war and the burials of Soviet citizens. You only need to know the last name, you can look at the lists of captured people. The Documentation Research Center is located in the city of Dresden, and it was he who organized this site to help people from all over the world. You can not only search the site, but also send a request through it.
- Rosarkhiv archives.ru is an agency that is an executive authority that keeps records of all government documents. Here you can make a request either online or by telephone. A sample electronic appeal is available on the website in the “appeals” section, left column on the page. Some services here are provided for a fee; a list of them can be found in the “archive activities” section. With this in mind, be sure to ask whether you will be required to pay for your request.
- rgavmf.ru - a naval reference book about the destinies and great deeds of our sailors. In the “orders and applications” section there is an email address for processing documents left for storage after 1941. By contacting the archive staff, you can get any information and find out the cost of such a service; most likely it is free.
WWII awards: search by last name
To search for awards and feats, an open portal has been organized, dedicated specifically to this www.podvignaroda.ru. Information is published here about 6 million cases of awards, as well as 500,000 unawarded medals and orders that never reached the recipient. Knowing the name of your hero, you can find a lot of new things about his fate. The posted scanned documents of orders and award sheets, data from registration files, will complement your existing knowledge.
Who else can I contact for information about awards?
- On the website of the Central Election Commission of the Ministry of Defense, in the section “Awards are looking for their heroes,” a list of awarded soldiers who did not receive them was published. Additional names can be obtained by phone.
- rkka.ru/ihandbook.htm - encyclopedia of the Red Army. It published some lists of the assignment of senior officer ranks and special ranks. The information may not be as extensive, but existing sources should not be neglected.
- https://www.warheroes.ru/ is a project created with the aim of popularizing the exploits of the defenders of the Fatherland.
Many useful information, which sometimes is not found anywhere, can be found on the forums of the above sites. Here people share valuable experiences and tell their own stories that can help you too. There are many enthusiasts who are ready to help everyone in one way or another. They create their own archives, conduct their own research, and can also be found only on forums. Don't shy away from this type of search.
WWII veterans: search by last name
- oldgazette.ru is an interesting project created by ideological people. A person who wants to find information enters data, it can be anything: full name, name of awards and date of receipt, line from a document, description of an event. This combination of words will be calculated by search engines, but not just on websites, but in old newspapers. Based on the results, you will see everything that was found. Maybe this is where you will be lucky, you will find at least a thread.
- It happens that we search among the dead and find among the living. After all, many returned home, but due to the circumstances of that difficult time, they changed their place of residence. To find them, use the website pobediteli.ru. Searchers send letters here asking for help in finding their fellow soldiers, random encounters during the war. The project's capabilities allow you to select a person by name and region, even if he lives abroad. If you see it on these lists or similar, you need to contact the administration and discuss this issue. Kind, attentive staff will definitely help and do everything they can. The project does not interact with government organizations and cannot provide personal information: telephone number, address. But it is quite possible to publish your search request. More than 1,000 people have already been able to find each other this way.
- 1941-1945.at Veterans do not abandon their own. Here on the forum you can communicate, make inquiries among the veterans themselves, perhaps they have met and have information about the person you need.
The search for the living is no less relevant than the search for dead heroes. Who else will tell us the truth about those events, about what they experienced and suffered. About how they greeted victory, the very first, the most expensive, sad and happy at the same time.
Additional sources
Regional archives were created throughout the country. Not so large, held up, often on the shoulders ordinary people, they preserved unique single records. Their addresses are on the website of the movement to perpetuate the memory of the victims. And also:
- https://www.1942.ru/ - “Seeker”.
- https://iremember.ru/ - memories, letters, archives.
- https://www.biograph-soldat.ru/ - international biographical center.
“Missing in action” - many people received notices with this phrase during the war years. There were millions of them, and the fate of these defenders of the Motherland remained unknown for a long time. In most cases, it remains unknown today, but there is still some progress in clarifying the circumstances of the disappearance of the soldiers. Several circumstances contribute to this. Firstly, new technological capabilities have emerged to automate the search for required documents. Secondly, search teams carry out useful and necessary work. Thirdly, the archives of the Ministry of Defense have become more accessible. But even today, in the vast majority of cases, ordinary citizens do not know where to look for those missing in action during the Second World War. This article may help someone find out the fate of their loved ones.
Search difficulties
In addition to factors that contribute to success, there are also those that make it difficult to find those missing in action during the Second World War. Too much time has passed, and there is less and less material evidence of events. There are also no more people who can confirm this or that fact. In addition, disappearances were considered suspicious during and after the war. It was believed that a soldier or officer could be captured, which in those years was considered almost a betrayal. A Red Army soldier could go over to the enemy’s side, and this happened, unfortunately, often. The fate of traitors is mostly known. Collaborators who were caught and identified were tried and either executed or given long sentences. Others found refuge in distant lands. Those of them who have survived to this day usually do not want to be found.
Where to look for missing prisoners of war during WWII
The fates of many Soviet prisoners of war after the war developed differently. Some were pardoned by the Stalinist punitive machine, and they returned home safely, although for the rest of their lives they did not feel like full-fledged veterans and they themselves felt some guilt before the “normal” participants in the hostilities. Others were destined for a long journey through places of detention, camps and prisons, where they most often ended up on unsubstantiated charges. A number of soldiers released from captivity ended up in the American, French or British occupation zones. These, as a rule, were betrayed by the allies Soviet troops, but there were exceptions. For the most part, our soldiers wanted to go home to their families, but rare realists understood what awaited them and asked for asylum. Not all of them were traitors - many simply did not want to cut down forest in the Far North or dig canals. In some cases, they find themselves, contact relatives and even assign them foreign inheritances. However, in this case, the search for those missing in action during the Second World War 1941-1945 can be difficult, especially if such a former prisoner changed his last name and does not want to remember his homeland. Well, people are different, as are their destinies, and it’s hard to condemn those who ate bitter bread in a foreign land.
Documentary trail
However, in the vast majority of cases, the situation was much simpler and more tragic. In the initial period of the war, soldiers simply died in unknown cauldrons, sometimes together with their commanders, and there was no one to write reports on irreparable losses. Sometimes there were no bodies left, or it was impossible to identify the remains. It would seem, where to look for those missing in action during the Second World War with such confusion?
But there is always one thread left, by pulling which you can somehow unravel the history of the person of interest. The fact is that any person, and especially a military man, leaves behind a “paper” trail. His whole life is accompanied by documentary circulation: clothing and food certificates are issued for a soldier or officer, he is included in the In case of injury in a hospital, a medical record is opened for a soldier. Here is the answer to the question of where to look for missing people. The Second World War ended long ago, but the documents are kept. Where? In the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense, in Podolsk.
Central Archive of the Moscow Region
The application procedure itself is simple, and it is also free. The archive of the Ministry of Defense does not require money for the search for those missing in the Second World War of 1941-1945, and bears the costs of sending the answer. In order to make a request, you need to collect as much personal information as possible about who you want to find. The more there is, the easier it will be for Central Asian workers to decide where to look for those missing in action during the Great Patriotic War, in which storage and on which shelf the treasured document may lie.
First of all, you need your last name, first name and patronymic, place and date of birth, information about where you were called from, where you were sent and when. If any documentary evidence, notices or even personal letters have been preserved, then, if possible, they should be included (copies). Information about government awards, incentives, injuries and any other information related to service in the Armed Forces of the USSR will also not be superfluous. If you know in which the missing person served, the unit number and rank, then this should also be reported. In general, everything that is possible, but only reliable. All that remains is to put it all on paper, send it by letter to the Archive’s address and wait for a response. It won't happen soon, but it will definitely happen. The people who work in the Central Election Commission of Moscow Region are obligatory and responsible.
Foreign archives
In the Second World War of 1941-1945, if the answer is negative from Podolsk, you should continue abroad. Wherever the roads of hard times have taken you Soviet soldiers languishing in captivity. Their traces are found in Hungary, Italy, Poland, Romania, Austria, Holland, Norway and, of course, Germany. The Germans kept documentation pedantically; a card was issued for each prisoner, equipped with a photograph and personal data, and if the documents were not damaged during hostilities or bombings, the answer would be found. The information concerns not only prisoners of war, but also those who were involved in forced labor. Searching for missing persons in the Second World War sometimes makes it possible to find out about the heroic behavior of a relative in a concentration camp, and if not, then at least clarity will be brought into his fate.
The answer is usually laconic. Archives report on the settlement in the area of which a soldier of the Red or Soviet Army took his last battle. Information about the place of pre-war residence, the date from which the soldier was removed from all types of allowance, and the place of his burial are confirmed. This is due to the fact that searching for missing persons in the Great Patriotic War by last name, and even by first name and patronymic, can lead to ambiguous results. Additional confirmation can be provided by the data of relatives to whom the notification should have been sent. If the burial place is indicated as unknown, then it is usually a mass grave located near the specified settlement. It is important to remember that reports on casualties were often compiled at the battlefields, and they were written in not very legible handwriting. Searching for missing persons in WWII 1941-1945 can be difficult due to the fact that the letter “a” resembles an “o”, or something like that.
Search engines
In recent decades, the search movement has become widespread. Enthusiasts who want to clarify the question of the fate of millions of soldiers who laid down their lives for their Motherland are engaged in a noble cause - they find the remains of fallen soldiers, determine by many signs whether they belong to one unit or another, and do everything to find out their surnames. No one knows better than these people where to look for those missing in action during the Second World War. In the forests near Yelnya, in the swamps of the Leningrad region, near Rzhev, where fierce battles took place, they conduct careful excavations, handing over to their native land its defenders with military honors. Search teams send information to government officials and the military, who update their databases.
Electronic means
Today, everyone who wants to find out the fate of their glorious ancestors has the opportunity to look into the commander’s reports from the battlefields. And you can do this without leaving your home. On the website of the Ministry of Defense archive you can familiarize yourself with unique documents and verify the veracity of the information provided. These pages emanate living history; they seem to create a bridge between eras. Searching for missing persons in the Great Patriotic War by last name is not difficult, the interface is convenient and accessible to everyone, including the elderly. In any case, we need to start with the lists of the dead. After all, the “funeral” could simply not come, and for many decades the soldier was considered missing.
