ARHIVSKI VJESNIK 42. (ZAGREB, 1999.)

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M. Kehrig, The position of military archives in the frame of archival service Independence or integration?, Arh. vjesn., god. 42 (1999), str. 113-128 with as comprehensive and pursuasive a body of material as possible is as little known in the United Kingdom as it is in the United States. I believe that we have now described the most important forms of organisation and function of the military archival system. We can thus distinguish three groups, namely military archives which are fully the responsibility of the defence administration; military archives which are organisationally and professionally a part of the national or state archives, but which have a special status; and lastly military archives which are fully integrated into the state archive administration. Allow me now to take a brief look at the benefits and drawbacks of these forms of organisation, whereby I wish to be very careful in my arguments. For that group which, for the sake of simplicity, I would like to call the French group, the subordination to the Ministry of Defence in terms of organisation, personnel and archival professionalism ensures clear leadership and responsibilities. Not least within the military historical organisation of the armed services a clear system has been created: the Historical Service, the military archives, museums and libraries all form a significant historical-scientific organisation within the armed forces and where the exchange of specialist knowledge can take place. An officer who works in the military archives or in the Historical Service is of course of great value when he is able to contribute to the courses in the officer schools and the General Staff academies, and the knowledge and specialist professionalism which he brings with him makes him an almost ideal contributor in both institutions. The aim of the armed forces to foster historical-political learning, historical consciousness and the ability to think in historical categories is well served under these circumstances. It must have been the result of experience that in the German Army General Staff until 1945 the organisation of military historical research, military archives, museums and libraries was amalgamated under the office of the Chief Quartermaster V; even at the outset of the Federal Armed Forces all of these functions were concentrated in a military science department which was then dissolved in the early 1960s and which lay dormant with its constituent parts until they were revived in recent times. The competition between the various archives which are tasked with preserving the records of the state administration is also exacerbated: each naturally wishes to perform better than the others, through better personnel training (and on occasion better salaries), better technical equipment, better infrastructure and performance success. The autonomous military archives also provide an arena for the self-esteem of the military forces to express itself without this impinging on other areas of state administration. On the other hand, it is precisely the autonomous position of the military archives, reflecting the heightened profile of the armed forces, which nowadays gives rise to the argument that there is no room for such a profile in a democratic state characterised by egalitarian tendencies; in other words, a position is taken against the existence of au126