Almost a year ago (April 2020), I came across a truly stunning website, that of Arthur O. Bauer. The site’s address (www.cdvandt.org) may be an acronym of Bauer’s organization which is called: Foundation (or Centre) for German Communication and Related Technologies.
I’m not sure how best to describe it… simply to say that Bauer (a Dutchman) has accessed over 800 Security Service files (the KV files) from the National Archives, and sifted through them, transcribed some of them, and presented his conclusions. On top of that, he as a truly breathtaking amount of information on technological components. All of this information is the result of decades of research and is obviously a work of passion. The trick is to find whatever needle you are looking for in this particular haystack!
His site has a long Table of Contents and also has an updated keyword wizard which, I believe, is mostly for the technological aspects of the site. But, with the Table of Contents, a Ctrl-F search is also fruitful. The colour coding is simple with red simply meaning that a file/page has had a recent contribution, change or update.
Given that Bauer has accessed and read so many of the KV files, he often sees patterns or connections that others might not. So his comments on various files are often thought-provoking and makes the reader wonder what they might be missing from other KV files!
(Archives header image by Chris Stermitz from Pixabay)