Hauptarchiv der N.S.D.A.P.
The Hauptarchiv der N.S.D.A.P. (English: Main Archive of the NSDAP) was the central archives office of the NSDAP and the German Labour Front (D.A.F.) since 1934. The NSDAP's organizational book described the mission of the new Main Archive of the NSDAP as follows: "In the Main Archive, all documents, printed matter, reports, etc., of interest to future historians are collected, reviewed, and scientifically processed." The organizational structure of the Main Archive essentially reflects this mission.
The focus of these efforts was therefore the collection of documents on the history of the "National Socialist movement" in the broadest sense. The Main Archives demonstrated considerable commitment in this area. The Main Archives repeatedly invited party members to submit interesting material, particularly on the "period of struggle" up to 1933. In the context of collecting activities, the documents and libraries of nationalist associations such as the Kyffhäuser League (Kyffhäuser-Bund) were appropriated, as were the confiscated archives, records, collections, and libraries of ideological opponents.
Contents
History
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As early as 1931, the Reich leadership of the NSDAP had considered reorganizing the "previous handling of archives within the Reich leadership," as at that time the various departments maintained their own "archives," thereby causing unnecessary costs and avoidable additional work. However, by 1934, these considerations appeared to have yielded no tangible results. It was not until 15 January 1934, at the suggestion of the Reich Training Director of the NSDAP and the DAF, Otto Gohdes, that a central party archive was established as a branch of the Reich Training Office. Shortly thereafter, Gohdes appealed to "everyone involved" to make their materials on the history of the "fighting period (Kampfzeit) up to the end of 1932" available to the "Historical Archive" of the Reich Training Directorate.
For the establishment and management of "a large political central archive within the NSDAP," a "suitable party member" was sought who would be "trained in archival and political fields, bring specialist knowledge and experience from similar activities, preferably have worked in the press, and especially be somewhat familiar with the party press." This task was ultimately assigned to Dr. phil. Karl Heinrich Erich Uetrecht (1879–1960) war ein deutscher Geologe und Archivar, who had previously worked in the Reich Training Office.
The archive was initially housed at Märkisches Ufer 34 in Berlin-Mitte. However, it was relocated to Munich in October 1934. After temporary accommodation in the building of the former Apostolic Nunciature in Munich, the archive moved into premises in a building of the Reich leadership at Barerstraße 15 on 3 June 1935.
During a visit to the archive's new premises, the Reich Treasurer of the NSDAP, Franz Xaver Schwarz, suggested "that the former Central Archive of the Reich Press Office be incorporated into the archive in order to avoid duplication of effort and to establish a uniform system for card indexing."
This Central Archive of the Reich Press Office presumably originates from a collection that Adolf Hitler himself had initiated in 1926 – just one year after the re-foundation of the NSDAPy in February 1925. Hitler had asked Mathilde von Scheubner-Richter, the widow of the "old fighter" Max von Scheubner-Richter, who was killed on 9 November 1923 in Munich, to establish a collection in collaboration with Heinrich Himmler that would document the National Socialist press as well as the press of the National Socialist movement's opponents; in addition, material on individuals hostile to the "movement" would be compiled. The inclusion of Himmler's deputy Reich Propaganda Director suggests that this collection was intended to serve both documentary and propaganda purposes from the outset. Around 1928, Mathilde von Scheubner-Richter's collection was taken over and continued by the Reich Propaganda Directorate. With the establishment of the Reich Press Office by Führer decree of 28 February 1934, the collection likely passed to this new office.
The merger of both archives into one party archive, to which the "Archive of the Foreign Press" was also attached, was criticized by the Reich Organizational Leadership as a curtailment of their authority and led to tensions between Uetrecht and his previous superior, Chief of Staff Simon at the Reich Training Office. In a meeting on 5 May 1934, Schwarz summarily and without prior consultation with the Reich Training Director placed the party archive directly under the authority of the Deputy Führer Rudolf Heß. The changes took effect with Decree 30/35 of the Deputy Führer of 14 June 1935.
The separation of the new party archive from the Political Organization of the NSDAP also met with resistance from the DAF. While the Reich Training Office was viewed as an office of both the NSDAP and the DAF, the DAF viewed the direct subordination of the Main Archives to the Führer's deputy as a transfer of part of its assets to the NSDAP. The DAF therefore demanded the separation of its assets from the Main Archives and sought to establish its own archive. In a letter dated 11 July 1935, Martin Bormann explained to Robert Ley why his "proposal to remove the 'Archive of the DAF' from the newly established Main Archives of the NSDAP is practically impossible, even with the best will in the world." His argument concludes with the statement:
- "A separation of the material according to party and DAF is therefore objectively impossible; it would destroy the entire structure of the Main Archives of the NSDAP, which was constructed according to further considerations regarding the history and development of the entire National Socialist movement."
At least Bormann was willing to reimburse the DAF for its previous financial expenses, provided such compensation had not already been paid by the Reich Treasurer. Ley apparently abandoned his spin-off plans afterward, but from 1937 onward he pursued the rebuilding of a DAF archive system, the core of which was the archives, records, and files of the former trade unions and other employee and employer associations taken over by the DAF. Operating according to the archival principles of state archives, the DAF Central Archive also took over documents from the DAF's current records.
On 13 June 1939, at Bormann's request, who had agreed in principle to the division of labor proposed by the Reich Ministry of the Interior, a meeting on the "question of the delimitation of responsibilities between the State Archives and the Party Archives" was held between representatives of the Reich Ministry of the Interior, the Director General of the State Archives, and the Reich Archives, along with a representative of the Führer's deputy. The latter expressed his general agreement. The Main Archives did not want "an endless collection," but it must be "in a position to meet all the requirements of the Führer and the Party regarding source material on party history at any time." The Reich Archives then proposed handing over photocopies of relevant documents to the Main Archives and leaving the originals in the files of the State Archives. In preparation, the State Archives were prepared to "compile the materials contained in their holdings that are important to party history into lists and to submit these lists to the Party Archives for the purpose of discussion." The representative of the Führer's deputy agreed to this.
However, it took more than a year until this compromise was formalized in the form of a circular from the Reich Ministry of the Interior to the state archives on 11 July 1940. In it, the Reich archives in Potsdam, Vienna, Reichenberg, Troppau, Posen, and Danzig, as well as the archives of the Reichsgaue in Austria, were requested to:
- a) compile the records contained in their holdings relating to the history of the National Socialist Party and movement as expeditiously as possible in special directories and to send these directories to the Main Archives of the NSDAP, Munich, Barerstraße 15;
- b) to continuously supplement these directories from time to time with subsequent entries.
Although the Reich archives fulfilled this obligation, the various party archives continued to make claims to state archival material. The Director General of the Prussian State Archives therefore requested the Reich Ministry of the Interior on 18 September 1941, to issue a further circular, which would also communicate the delimitation of responsibilities established in 1939; he had already submitted a corresponding draft on 14 June 1940. However, a true demarcation of the areas of responsibility between the Main Archives and the State Archives never occurred.
Although in most cases of doubt, the decision was made in favor of the State Archives, the files of the Bavarian State Ministry of the Interior, the Bavarian Political Police, and the Munich and Nuremberg-Fürth Police Directorates discovered in the Main Archives' holdings in 1945 show that the Main Archives' attempts to acquire state records were not entirely unsuccessful.
Name development
- Reichsschulungsamt, Geschichtliches Archiv (Reich Training Directorate/Office, Historical Archives)
- Zentral-Archiv der N.S.D.A.P. (Central Archive)
- Partei Archiv der N.S.D.A.P. und D.A.F. (Party Archive; March 1935)
- Reichsarchiv der NSDAP (Reich Archives of the NSDAP)
- Hauptarchiv der N.S.D.A.P. (from June 1935)
- Hauptarchiv der NSDAP (later style)
Organization
Organizationally, the "Party Archive of the NSDAP and DAF" was structured as follows in March 1935:
- 1. Historical Archive
- 2. Newspaper and Magazine Archive
- 3. Central Library I
- 4. Collections
- 5. Photo Laboratory, Image Department
- 6. German Studies Abroad
- 7. Bookbinding
- 8. History of Labour
Rehse Collection
The Rehse Collection was not integrated into the NSDAP's main archive. In 1914, the photographer Friedrich Joseph Maria Rehse (1870–1952) began collecting newspaper clippings, posters, leaflets, pictures, magazines, and books with the aim of establishing a World War I Museum after the end of World War I. Rehse abandoned his original plan to limit his collection to World War I in 1918 and steadily expanded it to include all available materials, albeit without a real concept. In 1929, the NSDAP acquired the "Archive for Contemporary History and Journalism," which had already received financial support; organizationally, the Rehse Collection henceforth fell under the jurisdiction of the Reich Treasurer. By 1935, the collection was housed in the Munich Residence as the "Museum of Contemporary History." At the meeting on 5 May 1935, the working areas of the Main Archives and the Rehse Collection were demarcated in such a way that the collection would manage all museum-grade items suitable for exhibition purposes, while all written and printed material would be kept in the Main Archives. The holdings of both institutions were to be streamlined accordingly. The order of the Führer's Deputy of 14 June 1935, confirmed this division of work.
Acquisition of records
The acquisition of records from offices, divisions, and affiliated associations of the NSDAP, as well as the archival evaluation and cataloguing of these documents according to the provenance principle, appears to have been rather peripheral to the activities of the Main Archives. Since, in addition to the archives at the Gau level, there were also separate archives of NSDAP divisions (SA, SS, NSKK, HJ, NS-Dozentenbund, NSD-Studentenbund, NS-Frauenschaft), affiliated associations (e.g., DAF or NSV), and even offices of the Reich Executive, the Main Archives' responsibility for the acquisition of "files withdrawn from current operations" was limited by Order No. 147/39 of the Deputy Führer of 21 July 1939, to the staff of the Deputy Führer, the Führer's Chancellery, and the Reich Executive of the NSDAP. Whether and to what extent such acquisitions took place cannot be determined.
The Main Archive's collections grew rapidly. In an article on the archive's fifth anniversary on 15 January 1939, the "Völkischer Beobachter" newspaper failed to quantify the volume of documents held in the Main Archive, but it did mention approximately 30,000 images, 9,000 negatives and photocopies, 150 films of party history, 3,600 posters, and approximately 100,000 books, magazines, and newspaper volumes.
Terror Bombing and post-war Federal Archives
The Main Archives had already begun evacuating the holdings housed in Munich at Barerstraße 15 and Gabelsbergerstraße 41 in 1943. The holdings were relocated to Passau, Neumarkt-St. Veith, and Hohenburg near Lengries. On 25 January 1945, Dr. phil. Arnold Brügmann, head of the Main Archives since 1942, informed the Party Chancellery of the complete destruction of the Munich offices. The alternative storage facilities, however, appear to have suffered no war damage. Nevertheless, the documents originally housed in Hohenburg remained lost after the war, while the majority of the remaining files likely fell into the hands of the US occupation forces and were handed over to the Berlin Document Center (BDC) established in Berlin. There, an attempt was made to reorganize the "Collection NSDAP Main Archive," which had become disorganized during the relocation and transport to Berlin.
As part of the microfilming process, the Hoover Institution created a "guide" that roughly indexed the entire holdings. The file titles were intended to be short and concise, but in many cases were accompanied by detailed explanations of the file contents. After the microfilming process was completed, the NS Main Archives collection was transferred to the Federal Archives in 1963. In view of the microfilming, the organization of the holdings was largely retained and initially left unchanged. The guide was translated into German as a provisional finding aid, but remained the sole resource until the present revision of the indexing. Since its transfer to the Federal Archives, the NS 26 holding has undergone some significant changes. On the one hand, documents have been transferred to other holdings of the Federal Archives, such as the groups XXV Party Chancellery and XXVI Deputy Führer to the NS 6 Party Chancellery holding. On the other hand, over time, archival-worthy documents on the history of the NSDAP, for which no other meaningful connection existed in the Federal Archives, were repeatedly added to the NS 26 collection. This applies not least to the fragments of the Rehse collection that found their way into the Federal Archives and could not be assigned elsewhere. These fragments were initially transferred to the Library of Congress in Washington in 1945. There, the materials were sorted out. The remainder returned to Germany went largely to the Bavarian State Library, the Bavarian State Archives, and the Munich City Archives.
Sources
- German Federal Archives: BArch NS 26
