Former head of the Bundeswehr Wolfgang Schneiderhan was elected President of the organisation in 2016, succeeding SPD politician Markus Meckel.

[2] During World War II, the Volksbund's work was mostly carried out by the Wehrmacht's own graves service.

Half of it was used for maintenance of the cemeteries, more than a third to remind what happened and to learn from it, the rest was used to keep the association running.

[1] The commission looks after "832 military cemeteries in 46 countries with about 2.75 million dead" and its work is carried out today by 8,000 honorary and 556 full-time employees.

[2][1] Maintenance of German war cemeteries in France is looked after by the Service d'entretien des sépultures militaires allemandes (the "German Military Burials Maintenance Service") known as S.E.S.M.A..[6] The German War Graves Commission offers an accessible online database of 4.8 million individual names for World Wars I and II.

Among these are war dead transferred to Germany or persons who died within Germany but only those are registered whose remains were transferred to war cemetery areas within civil cemeteries, not those removed to individual family graves.