Der Zeit has released a search tool that lets people check whether their ancestors were in the Nazi Party, opening a vast wartime membership index to anyone with a name, and sometimes a birth date and place. The online tool went live last week.
The database draws on a complete data set that Der Zeit obtained, processed and statistically evaluated, covering a central card index with 4.5 million members and a regional Gaukartei file with 8.2 million. The search engine takes users to individual membership cards in both holdings, where multiple cards can appear under one name and the exact date and place of birth may be needed to identify the right person.
That reach matters because between 1925 and 1945, 10.2 million Germans joined the Nazi Party, and the records were nearly lost. Nazi leaders sent the index cards to a paper mill in Munich shortly before the end of the war, intending them to be destroyed. The Americans secured the documents after the war and took them to the Berlin Document Center, where an estimated 44% of the central card index and 77% of the regional card index survived. Even now, the central file still contains around 4.5 million names and the regional file 8.2 million.
Jürgen Falter told Der Zeit that 90% of all former Nazi members can be found in both holdings, though information on 1 million members has been lost. Before this search tool existed, people had to submit an official inquiry to the German Federal Archives or the US National Archives to check whether a relative appeared in the files. The US National Archives holds microfilm copies of Nazi NSDAP membership files, and the Federal Archives can also provide information on former members of the Wehrmacht, SS, SA, the Todt Organization and other Nazi organizations on request. Individuals tried for Nazi crimes can be searched in the database of the Institute for Contemporary History in Munich, while victims of Nazi persecution can be researched on the Arolsen Archives.
The reaction online was immediate. Soon after the search engine was published, users began posting family discoveries on social media. One Reddit genealogy user said they found their grandad’s name in the database and learned that he joined the Nazi Party at 18, adding that he died a long time ago and that no one in the family ever knew. The same user called it an awful thing to learn and sit with, and said it reinforces how easily fascism is normalized and makes them vigilant for it and wanting to work harder to fight it. Another user said they found a doctor, a distant cousin of their grandmother, who was in the Nazi Party and very far Right and presumably involved in medical crimes as he ran a sanatorium, while another said even that was enough to make them completely sick to their stomach, with lots of complex feelings there.
For many families, the Die Zeit search engine does more than name a relative. It turns private ancestry into a public record of complicity, and the real question now is not whether the files will be used, but how many households are prepared for what they may find.
