NARA EXPERTS
Independent Researchers Operating Out Of The Washington D.C. Area
NARA EXPERTS
Independent Researchers Operating Out Of The Washington D.C. Area
AAA RESEARCH LLC
We are a small group of independent researchers operating out of the National Archives & Records Administration (NARA), as well as other archival facilities in the DC Metro area. We assist our clients in locating and copying a wide variety of records including historical documents, aerial photographs, motion picture and sound recordings, photography, technical drawings, and much, much more.
German Aerial Photography
Over 1.2 million aerial images made by the German Luftwaffe, principally covering parts of Easter Europe with a heavy focus on Russia and Ukraine, are available.
American Aerial Photography
Millions of images from the U.S. Military of wartime Western Europe and Germany, as well as civilian agencies showing most of the U.S., are available for the period 1937 to the 1970s.
German Technical Manuals
The Germans called them ‘Dienstvorschriften’, written guides covering a huge variety of topics. Thousands of detailed manuals on German military equipment, regulations, etc.
German Military Documents
Over 400 million pages of documents survived the war and are now on microfilm. War diaries, NSDAP party records, personnel files, it is a massive collection.
American Military Documents
War diaries, mission statements, and a huge variety of other documents of U.S. Military origin are housed at the National Archives and available for review/copying.
Custom & Specialist Searches
The National Archives is the largest archives building in the world containing billions and billions of records. The list of possible research topics is virtually endless!
Our clients include:
- Military Historians seeking German, American, and Soviet Unit information, including war diaries, maps, personnel files, aerials photography, and other available documents.
- Individuals researching family histories
- Small businesses seeking government documentation available only through archival searches.
- Film companies searching for stock footage.
- Town, city and regional administrations seeking data relating to their own history.
- Historians seeking information on public and political organizations in 3rd Reich, World War I and Weimar Republic Germany.
- Historians seeking archival documents of a wide variety of U.S. Government agencies.
- Hobby Historians seeking information on CIA data relating to a wide variety of topics and now available through the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA)
- Not-for-Profit organizations searching for information on historical buildings, previous locations of gravesites, and similar facilities.
We can be an invaluable source for any sized project, be it a simple search for a specific known record, or an extensive research assignment covering all aspects of a broader topic. We are fluent in English, German, and Russian, and have a very in-depth knowledge of the archival sources available.
Aerial Photography
Military Documents
There are over 200 million pages of captured documents of the German armed forces. Coverage of different topics ranges from highly detailed to cursory. Please contact us with your area(s) of interest, and we can usually send you details on what is available for a given topic on the same day.
Custom Searches
The American armed forces routinely transfer all declassified documents to the National Archives, where these are still housed to this day in their original paper format. The scope of the collection is vast, but includes everything from American War Diaries by Unit to Nuremburg Trial Records.
Our Speciality Areas Include
- World War II Aerial Photography of Germany & Eastern Europe.
- World War II German Military Technical Manuals.
- World War II German Military Personnel Files.
“We couldn’t do this important work without them…” We Russians lost more people in the war than any other country, more than 20 million. In the chaotic first weeks and months of the war, nobody knew what was going on, and soldiers were killed and buried by the millions in unmarked graves, usually by just laying them in defensive trenches and covering them up. We members of the Dolina war graves society want to do what we can to recover the remains of those brave men who died like cattle herded to the slaughter, and we need old aerial photographs to identify places we can excavate. Thanks to www.naraexpert.com, we have been able to almost immediately recover dozens of remains in fields where we thought there would be none, or where we had looked on and off for years with only limited success, or no success at all. These photos are a silent tribute to the madness of war, but also to the spirit of those who gave their lives for our mother country.
“Now I know where I can lay the flowers….” I am one of millions of German ‘Kinder des Krieges’ (war children). When I was two, I lost my father on the Eastern front in Ukraine, and my mother never really recovered from it. I couldn’t even ask her about him without it upsetting her, and as I grew older, I desperately wanted to know more about the man who was half of my very origin. When my mother died, I found the old letters with official notification of his death, and which my mother had received by the authorities during the war. With my father’s biographical data and those letters alone, AAA Research was able to locate precise details about where my father was last stationed, the circumstances under which he died, and even the village where he was buried. To my utter amazement, they even provided me with aerial photographs of the village where his grave was located, together with the precise GPS coordinates and how it looks today. Now I finally know where I can lay the flowers that I had always wanted to get for him. I am currently planning a trip to Ukraine to accomplish this goal. .
“The reaction time was unbelievable…” Here in Germany if you want to get military records, the federal archives are at your service… but only on their schedule and their terms! And in addition to ridiculously high copy fees, they also practically make you sign away your firstborn son with respect to royalty fees if you ever plan to use the materials in a book or other publication. Add to that the endless nonsense of the data protection laws, which prohibit them giving out certain personnel files unless you can prove you are a direct descendant of the person in question, and then again only after another ridiculous set of delays. AAA Research replied to my request within minutes, and within a day I had the order placed, and less than a day later I had the results. I was speechless that it could all happen so quickly, and at a much lower price than the German archives demanded, and with no strings attached!