Who was your ancestor: the base of Hitler's party members was published in the USA

In the USA, the online database of Hitler's party members was published, writes DW❶❷. According to the publication, in Germany they are discussing how to perceive this data.

5,442 electronic cards about 6.6 million Germans who were members of the NSDAP before 1945 have been published on the website of the US National Archives. Now anyone can find a specific person there by first and last name. The German Historical Museum in Berlin has already stated that these data are incomplete, since a total of 8.5 million people were in Hitler's party. In Germany itself, these data have been available for a long time, pointed out the German historian Johannes Spohr.

"It seems that the general public has now become very interested in conducting their own research on the Internet," he said, "but the same sources have been available in the German Federal Archives since 1994. And there you can get a lot more information than just membership information."

However, in Germany there are stricter rules for the protection of personal data: information about Nazi ancestors can only be obtained by relatives, 100 years after birth or 10 years after the death of a person. In addition, these data must be requested separately from the state archive.

Spohr believes that party cards by themselves will not be able to say much about a person: it is unclear whether he was a fanatic or an opportunist. In addition, about 20% of such cards did not survive. That is, the absence of a name in the database does not guarantee that the ancestor was not a supporter of Hitler.

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❷An organization whose activities are deemed undesirable on the territory of the Russian Federation