Before the advent of the Web, the name of George F. Nafziger was already a staple in wargaming circles. His work on the wars of the French Revolution and his collection of well-researched Orders so Battle, especially for the Napoleonic area, made him the first adress for anyone wargaming that time. Nafziger started to make single OOBs available via the Internet in the Mid-Nineties, and his now rather dated looking website enabled visitors to order print-outs of selected battles and campaigns.
In 2010 Nafziger retired from publishing those OOBs and donated his whole collection to the public domain. It is currently hosted at the US Army’s CARL website. Additionally Alternatewars.com culled the complete archive and made it available as a collection of zipped archives for quicker access.
The Nafziger Collection itself contains orders of battle from 1600 to 1945 with over 7000 individual pdf files. What makes those files special is that the majority of them is based on archival sources, which are not easily accessible for mortal souls like us. Its depth and scope are unparalleled anywhere, and it still remains one of the most reliable, best sourced and detailed adress for order of battle research.
Date: April, 23th 2012
URL: https://cgsc.contentdm.oclc.org/
Updated: March 18th, 2020: CARL has a new URL.