The release of Nazi Party membership records by the U.S. government has shaken family histories in Germany, revealing the names of relatives previously unknown to have been members of the NSDAP.
"It still doesn’t make sense to me. Even now, saying it out loud, I just can’t wrap my head around it. So I try to find explanations," says sales representative Stefan Dimter, 48, who discovered that his grandfather, who died before he was born, was listed as a party member, contradicting what he had always heard from his father.The discovery was made possible by a search tool created by the newspaper Die Zeit using microfilm reproductions made available by the U.S. National Archives. The project has received more than 3 million visits and generated thousands of reader accounts of similar stories.
From 1925 to 1945, around 10.2 million people joined the NSDAP, and the records filled more than 50 tons of paper. According to political scientist Jürgen Falter, the membership was heterogeneous, and an estimated 60% of public servants at the time joined the party.
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