Military Agency Records RG 389

The War Department and the Army Records

Records of the Office of the Provost Marshal General
(RG 389)

The Office of the Provost Marshal General (OPMG) was established in July 1941 and given the responsibility for the surveillance, investigation, and internment of aliens and suspected subversives. It supervised the security clearance of employees in military installations and war plants, supervised the use of troops in domestic disturbances, oversaw the investigations of crimes involving military personnel, and the apprehension of persons suspected of such crimes. It also controlled the internment of prisoners of war in the United States and their supervision and had general policy direction over the organization, training, and operations of the Corps of Military Police, the Security Intelligence Corps, and (in part) the Counterintelligence Corps, and over the training of personnel for civil-affairs duties in occupied and liberated areas.

Records of the Military Government Division

The Military Government Division was established in August 1942 and had staff responsibility for the selection and training of qualified civilians for direct commissions and of military personnel for duty as civil-affairs officers. It operated the School for Military Government and civil affairs training programs at civilian institutions of higher learning. The actual administration of civil affairs was carried out by the Civil Affairs Division of the War Department General Staff, but the Military Government Division maintained close liaison with that Division and with the Military Training Division of Headquarters Army Service Forces, the Navy Department, and the American Council of Learned Societies.

Publications and Background Papers Relating to Civil Affairs and Military Government in Occupied Areas 1942-1946 (Entry 443)

Guides, histories, handbooks, reports, studies, and other records, some of which were published, relating to the control of civil affairs and implementation of military government in Germany and other occupied and liberated areas. Included are bibliographies on various subjects, intelligence summaries of occupied areas, civil affairs handbooks on foreign countries, histories of the occupied countries, and a five-volume history of the military government training experience in World War II. The records are arranged in two subseries, the first of which is arranged numerically and the second alphabetically by subject. Within the numerical arrangement there is background information on military government planning for Germany and other countries. The subject subseries contains considerable information relating to civil affairs planning for specific countries (filed alphabetically by name under the general subject heading "Countries." The information for each country varies from general economic and administrative date to very specific subjects. For example, entry "Baltic" includes separate essays on the prewar status of Jews in Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia; for "Poland" there is an intelligence study of the German occupation administration of that country and an essay on the status of Jews in prewar Poland. there are extensive collections of background materials for Germany, Italy, and Japan pertaining to all manner of civil affairs interests (e.g., labor, finance, transportation, public health, regional administration, political organization). Boxes 840-884 location: 290/34/1/07 Boxes 1-4 location: 290/34/2/06

Records of the Provost Division

The Provost Division was established in January 1944 to supervise the investigation of crime in the military establishment and the apprehension and detention of military offenders. Previously criminal investigations of this type had been supervised by the Military Police Division, and the investigative work had been done in the Service Commands mainly by the investigators of the Provost Marshal General and the Counterintelligence Corps.

Hesse Crown Jewels Investigative Case Files 1944-1952 (Entry 469A)

This series contains records pertaining to the investigation into the theft of the Hesse Crown Jewels from Hesse Kronberg castle and other items during the Allied occupation of Germany. (Note 20) Boxes 1-4