Weimar and Nazi Germany

The only English-language, digital, primary-source archive to cover Germany from 1918 to 1939. It includes nearly 600,000 pages of declassified, exclusive, previously undigitized files sent to the UK Foreign Office from embassies, covert contacts, and other sources.

Weimar and Nazi Germany documents an intense time of hyperinflation, political extremism, and seizures of power. It details the aftermath of World War I, recovery following the war, the Great Depression, and Hitler’s rise, providing contemporaneous accounts, documents, reports, and correspondence of how Western democracies struggled with fascism and autocracy.

Most of the material is in English and therefore easily accessible to researchers.  It includes materials examining events of importance to most European countries, especially the rise of fascism in Spain and Italy. 

For the first time, the full text of the files can be searched with keyword and proximity functionality. Hundreds of thousands of pages of critical materials can now be mined with sophisticated tools.

Report on the Bier Keller Putsch :The Government cannot escape their responsibility….they …allowed him to carry on…and train and arm bands of young men until the movement had gone so far they feared to stop it.”   Click to view larger version.

• The German Revolution of 1918-1919

• Allied occupation of the Rhineland

• The peace treaties, including the Treaty of Versailles

• The Spartacist uprising of January 1919

• Reichstag elections & cabinet formation

• Hyperinflation, 1923

• The Beer-Hall Putsch and Hitler’s trial

• The Dawes Plan

• The Kellogg-Briand Pact

• The Great Depression

• The Reichstag fire

• Hitler appointed Chancellor

• The creation of concentration camps

• The passing of anti-Semitic laws
  

• The banning of political parties

• Germany’s departure from the League of Nations

• The Night of the Long Knives

• The remilitarization of the Rhineland

• The Berlin Olympics

• The 1936 Italo-German Treaty and Mussolini

• Anschluss with Austria

• Foreign aggression and expansionism

• Bombing of Guernica and the Spanish Civil War

• Invasion of Czechoslovakia

• Nazi-Soviet Non-Aggression Pact

• Munich Agreement

• Kristallnacht

• Invasion of Poland

For learning

Students will be excited to engage with previously secret primary sources. Additional learning tools include:

• Specially commissioned subject essays written by members of the Editorial Board.

• A guide to organizations, committees, and subcommittees, including political parties.

• A guide to the key figures who appear in the files and who played important roles in the events discussed. The list provides a new route into the study of the period.

• Video support tools

• Suggested syllabi

For research

Materials are selected from FO 371, one of the most used file series at the National Archives. Every file from 1918 to 1939 categorized as “Germany” or “Rhineland” has been digitized. These files contain Foreign Office and British Embassy reports, correspondence, memoranda, communications, transcripts of speeches and public statements, newspaper cuttings, international agreements, and analyses.

Of particular interest is the FO 800/268-270 series containing the correspondence of Nevile Henderson, Britain’s last ambassador to Germany before World War II. These files provide a personal account of meetings with Nazis at the top of government and of the events that led to WWII.

GERMAN REVOLUTION, NOVEMBER, 1918

As the German empire descends into revolution at the end of World War I, the Foreign Office reports on the key event that marked the beginning of the end of the monarchy: the sailors’ mutiny at Wilhelmshaven.

It is reported that a “Workmen’s and Soldiers Council” had taken control and declared a new republic in northwest Germany.

GUSTAV STRESEMANN APPOINTED CHANCELLOR, AUGUST 1923

Gustav Stresemann is appointed Chancellor at the height of the hyperinflation crisis. The British ambassador to Germany takes this opportunity to recount his past candid conversations with Stresemann and give an assessment of his character and readiness to govern.

Intriguingly, Stresemann foresaw that the Communists might pose immediate difficulty for the government but that in the long term a “Nationalist reaction” was the greater threat.

Search fields

Materials can be searched using the following fields:

• Document Type

• Countries and Dependencies (standardized)

• Regions (Bundesländer as of 1920)

• Urban Centre

• Key Events

• Languages

• Organizations

• People

• Keywords

• Copyright

• Notes

• Descriptions of the contents of subfolders

Document Types

• External Correspondence

• Government Correspondence

• Intergovernmental Correspondence

• International Agreements

• Legal and Official Government Material

• Maps

• Meeting Minutes

• Press, Media, and Print Publications

• Reports

• Speeches and Public Statements

• Tables and Graphs

• Visual Media

• Miscellany

Access options

Weimar and Nazi Germany is currently available as a one-time purchase of perpetual rights or through annual subscription on the History Commons platform with features including:

• Ability to cross-search across all the history collections, with additional discovery tools

• Updated, fast user interfaces, with mobile versions

• Search tables hidden within documents and export the data

• Enhanced search tools, including Boolean and proximity operators

• Zooming, printing and downloading

• Free hosting of your related content