Nazi search engine shows if ancestors were in Hitler's party

The online search engine, set up by the German newspaper Die Zeit in cooperation with archives in Germany and the United States, allows users to search through several million Nazi Party membership cards, known as the "NSDAP-Mitgliederkartei." Christian Rainer from Austria shared his experience, finding his grandfather's name within seconds and learning he joined the Nazi Party just days after the Anschluss in 1938.

These membership cards, originally stored at Nazi headquarters in Munich, were nearly destroyed at the end of World War II but were saved by a paper mill director and later handed over to American forces. They played a crucial role in the de-Nazification process in post-war Germany. For decades, the cards were kept by the Americans at the Berlin Document Center before being transferred to the German Federal Archives, with microfilm copies sent to the US National Archives in Washington D.C.

Until recently, inquiries required formal requests to the German Archives. However, the US Archives began making its records available online in March, enabling Die Zeit to obtain and back up the data for easy searching. The response to the search engine has been overwhelming, with millions of accesses and thousands of shares, allowing many to uncover previously unknown family truths.