Who became a Nazi?
A Structured Database of the German Denazification Questionnaires, 1945–1949
(DeNazDB)
Who became a Nazi?
What caused individual Germans to vote for and join Nazi organizations is still not fully understood, in part because current research relies on either aggregate quantitative or small-scale qualitative data.
Together with Selina Hofstetter (Tec de Monterrey), William Mikkel Dack (Rowan University), and Victor Gay (TSE & IAST), we collect individual longitudinal data from the Denazification Questionnaires (Fragebogen) that were distributed in the U.S. occupation Zone in Germany between 1945-1949.
Referred to as the “political litmus test,” the Fragebogen was the heart of denazification efforts in the Allied and Soviet occupied territories. More than 20 million Germans completed such a questionnaire between 1945 and 1949. We are digitizing and coding a population-representative sample of the Fragebogen from the former U.S. occupation zone.
The Fragebogen contain detailed information about individuals’ past membership in Nazi organisations, retrospective voting records, as well as academic and occupational histories, income, assets, and other socio-demographics. We will answer two research questions:
Which were the life events that led to voting for and membership to NSDAP membership
Did individuals benefit economically from NSDAP membership?
Project Funding
The project has been funded by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) and the Agence Nationale der la Recherche (ANR), as well as the Institute for Advanced Study in Toulouse (IAST), the Stanford Spogli Center for European Studies, and the American Economic History Association.
Socio-Demographic Data in Fragebogen, Page 1
Work History Data in Fragebogen, Page 2
