The Wiener Library is pleased to announce that it has now published online a fully searchable database of document descriptions from the Nazi Party’s main archive, including personal papers of Adolf Hitler, Julius Streicher and Heinrich Himmler.

The collection of some 240,000 microfilm frames of original papers captured by the US Army at the end of the war was acquired by the Library over 30 years ago.  It has been supplemented by records from the Berlin Document Centre, and is thought to have survived largely intact with the exception of a few departments’ records.  Up until now, the finding aids have only been accessible in the Library’s Reading Room, limiting use of the collection.  Now the archive is fully searchable for the first time, and the Library hopes it will be the focus of increased interest.

The following notes are taken from the Guide to the collection, compiled by Grete Heinz and Agnes F. Peterson, Stanford University, 1964:

“The archive was established on 15 January 1934 in Berlin in the wake of the Nazi party’s assumption of power, to preserve for posterity its own records and those of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront. In October 1934 it moved to Munich and was amalgamated with the records of the Reichspropagandaleitung and in 1935 the organisation was made directly responsible to Hitler’s deputy, Rudolf Hess. In 1943 the archive was moved to Passau and Neumarkt- St. Veit in Bavaria because of the threat of bombing. The US Army seized the collections at the end of the war and reassembled them in 1946 at the Berlin Document Centre.”

The archive was the main repository for records of the divisions and affiliated organisations of the Nazi Party at least up until 1933, but only collected a few records from these groups thereafter. It includes correspondence from Germans worldwide during the mid 1930s. In addition there are some reports of party affairs and the political climate of wartime Germany from the various Gaue or regions including Austria. Also contained are the records of authorities and government agencies and the police during the Weimar era, which the Nazis obtained after their assumption of power and retained in their original form. These pertain to individual party members and are a particularly rich source of material on Nazi rallies, meetings and acts of violence.

All of the material including the finding aid is in German with the exception of some explanatory English notes.

Katharina Hubschmann
Senior Librarian
Wiener Library