History PhD student Tristan Krause has won a highly competitive Research Grant from the German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD). This award will allow him to spend the next academic year conducting dissertation research at the University of Freiburg in Germany.
Tristan’s doctoral research examines the search for missing American military personnel in Germany after the Second World War. The effort to locate and identify tens of the thousands of MIA Americans was not just a massive technical challenge for the US Army, it was also a key component of American occupation policy in postwar Germany. Using records from Americans, Germans, and international organizations like the International Tracing Service, Tristan shows the connections between the missing and critical events like the confrontation with the crimes of the Nazi regime, the Cold War division of Germany, and the repatriation of millions of refugees and displaced persons in the wake of the war.
Tristan is a scholar-practitioner who approaches his subject from several different angles. Beginning in college, he has actively participated in archeological expeditions to recover the bodies of the missing in Europe. This has included field work through the University of Wisconsin’s Missing in Action Recovery and Identification Project and the Cranfield University Recovery and Identification of Casualties Project.
Tristan’s doctoral advisor, Dr. Adam Seipp, says that Tristan “is a terrific example of the connections between historical research and public service.” The search for missing American personnel continues to the present, under the auspices of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA). Texas A&M University is proud to be a research partner of the DPAA and to host events and student internship opportunities around this important mission.
Tristan earned his BA in History from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 2018 and his MA at Texas A&M University in 2023. He has worked as a legislative assistant at the Wisconsin State Assembly and a policy trainee at the European Parliament Liaison Office in Washington, DC.
His article, “The Dramatic Sequel to the War”: The U.S. Army, the International Tracing Service, and the Search for the Missing, 1945–1950,” appeared in the January 2025 issue of the Journal of Military History. He has given papers at a variety of national and international academic events. His research has also been supported by an award from the John A. Adams Center for Military History and Strategic Analysis at Virginia Military Institute, a Russell F. Weigley Graduate Student Travel Grant from the Society for Military History, a Graduate Residential Fellowship from the Melbern G. Glasscock Center for Humanities Research, and the Department of History. He currently holds the Brian McAllister Linn Dissertation Fellowship in Military History.