Post WW2 Missing Persons Agency??

Hello everyone! I have yet another question to ask, once again involving my hobby of writing. I have recently created a possible story idea, only that it won't take place during the Second World War (except in Flashbacks), but immediately after. The idea is that a wealthy British WW1 vet hires a friends son (A former British tank commander), an American (a former B-17 pilot), a German (a former U-boat skipper), an Austrian (the daughter of a missing German Captain), and a former Marine, to help find soldiers and Civilians who went missing during the war. The 5 investigators travel around the world searching for the missing.

My main question is this, was there an agency created after WW2 to try and find missing persons? I know the U.S and the U.K made government funded searches for some MIA's after the war, and other private investigators came about after the war as well. If such an agency didn't exist, how much legitimacy does this plot carry? Thank you for any and all answers or suggestions!

 

Hello. I have traced citizens and soldiers connected to Germany through the International Tracing Service (ITS) via the Red Cross. From what I understand, this service began as the Red Cross documented medical care to civilians, providing families with a means of finding each other in early days after the war.

For victims who died as a result of Nazi persecution, many databases exist on genealogy sites that use records found at camps or military agencies. Jewish agencies like Yad Vashem and the US Holocaust Memorial and Museum keep records of the dead as well. (I have found persecution records for those who did not perish usually are not made public.)

Berlin has a service to provide public information about specific German soldiers if their ID # can be provided. (If not a family member, information is limited to whether the soldier was killed or discharged.) I imagine such services exist in each country of interest, limited to privacy concerns.

Each of these services were founded at different times, so I am not sure if they were around when your story takes place. Information about the missing in former Soviet territories was limited until the late 1990s, and only now has begun to be widely available to the international public. Still, searching for some of the missing in previously-Soviet areas can be a challenge. All of the founding dates of the other tracing services shouldn’t be difficult to find out.

Good luck!