According to accepted belief, the Prussian War Archives were destroyed by bombing in 1945. The better informed have always regarded the official position on this matter with a little scepticism. In recent years, parts of the missing archive have turned up in odd places and have been returned to the Prussian Archives in Berlin. These include Gneisenau's papers. On the fall of the Iron Curtain, inquiries were made in the crumbling Soviet Union. This led to an admission that indeed part of the Prussian War Archives were indeed in a special collection in Moscow.

By co-incidence, it seems that the bombs missed those parts of the archives which were of interest to the Soviets. This is now leading to speculation as to the whereabouts of the remainder of the archives. It seems likely that Soviet soldiers removed the entire archive to Berlin on its fall in April 1945. Soviet historians and officials later catalogued the part of interest to them. So what happened to the remainder? Were they discarded or were they kapt for possible later use? The latter seems most probable. Does anybody have a man in Moscow that can investigate?
Information supplied by Peter Hofschröer

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