Methodology and source policy

Nazi Report is an educational archive about perpetrators and the institutions that made persecution, occupation violence and mass murder possible. The project’s seven circles describe a person’s position in a chain of authority: supreme decision, strategic coordination, programme design, territorial rule, operational command, enabling administration and local execution. The circles are not a ranking of suffering, notoriety or numbers of victims.

A profile is published only when its central claims can be supported by at least two independent and credible sources. Preference is given to archival collections, trial records, research institutes, memorial museums, peer-reviewed scholarship and institutions such as the Institute of National Remembrance, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Yad Vashem and the Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum. A frequently repeated claim is not treated as independently confirmed when every repetition leads back to the same original text.

Each profile separates documented findings from interpretation. A person’s office, period of service, geographic remit, orders, administrative acts and proven conduct establish the factual base. The interpretive section then explains how that role connected decisions with implementation. Where an office, unit or regional authority committed many crimes, the profile does not automatically assign every act to its chief.

Postwar accountability is part of the historical mechanism, not an epilogue. The archive records whether a person was investigated, tried, convicted, acquitted, released or never brought before a court. It distinguishes allegations, findings of fact and final judgments. An acquittal or discontinued investigation is reported accurately without converting it into a claim that the underlying persecution did not occur.

Uncertainty is visible. Conflicting dates, incomplete files, disputed competencies and differences between charges and judgments are stated on the page. The project avoids building a league table from estimates of victims. Responsibility may overlap across political leadership, police command, civil administration, transport, property seizure and on-site execution; adding profile-level numbers would count many of the same victims repeatedly.

Publication principles

• Function and agency, not a victim-count ranking
• At least two independent credible sources per published profile
• Clear separation of confirmed findings, interpretation and uncertainty
• No automatic attribution of every unit or regional crime to one person
• Postwar investigation and judgment described with their legal limits
• Portraits used only when a free licence is confirmed