More than 80 years after the Nazi dictatorship ended, millions of membership index cards from the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP) are searchable online in the US National Archives. The digitized collection spans over 5,000 microfilm reels and contains records on around 6.6 million Germans who were party members up to 1945. But the files are far from complete: historians estimate that roughly 8.5 million people belonged to the party in 1945, meaning about one in five adult Germans was at least a nominal member — and some index cards have been lost.
In Germany, access to Nazi-era personnel files is more restricted. Statutory protection periods mean personal information is released only 100 years after birth or 10 years after death, and requests must be made in writing. Private individuals can generally obtain such files only when researching relatives, not acquaintances. As a result, the names and stories of victims are more visible in public memory than those of perpetrators, who often remain vague figures in family narratives.
Historian Johannes Spohr, who runs a research service called “present past,” has spent about a decade helping people investigate family histories from the Nazi era. Clients range in age from their 20s to their 90s, spanning generations who can no longer rely on oral testimonies because eyewitnesses are disappearing. That shift has made archival research increasingly important for families trying to fill gaps where memory has faded.
Surveys show many Germans hold rosy views of their ancestors: over two-thirds believe their forebears were not perpetrators, about 36% see them as victims, and more than 30% think relatives helped persecuted people. Spohr warns these beliefs often stem from feeling rather than evidence. After the war, many families avoided discussing individual involvement in Nazi crimes; this post-war silence shaped myths and distorted images that persist.
The NSDAP index cards list names, birth data, membership dates and numbers, and in some cases addresses or photos. But a card cannot reveal motives. It cannot say whether someone was an ardent believer, an opportunist, a coerced joiner, or someone who held party membership but committed no atrocities. Only about 80% of the cards survived, so absence from the index is not definitive proof that a relative was not a member. Further research is needed to establish roles: whether someone joined before 1933, held party office, or participated in abuses. Non-members could also have been involved in crimes, while many members may have lived ordinary lives without committing violence.
People researching their families often focus first on whether an ancestor was violent or complicit in wartime abuses: Did a grandfather who said he “drove a truck” in Crimea serve in the Wehrmacht or commit war crimes? Were forced laborers exploited on the family farm? Do family possessions include art or goods looted from Jewish owners? Discoveries can be minimal, leaving gaps that invite speculation, or they can contradict long-held family narratives.
Recent events have amplified interest in such research. The war in Ukraine has led some to question relatives’ wartime roles, and the resurgence of right-wing politics in Germany has prompted others to look for links between contemporary movements and unresolved family histories. Many seek to understand whether silence about the past has allowed extremist ideologies to persist across generations.
The survival of the NSDAP card indexes is owed to a single act of defiance. At the end of the war, the Nazis ordered incriminating records destroyed. Hanns Huber, a Munich paper-mill manager assigned to destroy the files, secretly hid them under wastepaper. In late 1945, US forces recovered the documents and stored them at the Berlin Document Center in West Berlin for the Nuremberg trials. The United States tried to return the files to Germany as early as 1967, but German authorities delayed acceptance, fearing the sensitivity: many former Nazis still held influential positions in public life.
The US National Archives has now made these records available online mainly as part of a broad digitization effort. Germany’s Federal Archives plan to publish their own holdings digitally once statutory protection periods expire, likely around 2028. Meanwhile, researchers and descendants must navigate both the available online indexes and the more restricted German files if they want fuller pictures of their relatives’ roles during the Nazi era.
Uncovering uncomfortable truths about ancestors is, according to Spohr, both a personal responsibility and a public one. Remembering the past fully means confronting where it hurts: acknowledging perpetrators as well as victims, filling silences, and resisting myths born of post-war denial.
