Problems and Potentials of the Berlin Document Center

Abstract

Although most students of contemporary German history, especially of the National Socialist period, are aware of the United States Document Center at Berlin (BDC) and its general holdings, that archive is not being exploited to its potential. This is primarily because the Document Center was created and organized for the political purpose of compiling information on the activities of individual Nazis. For this reason, the holdings lend themselves most readily to the study of individual involvement and to quantitative research on the personnel of various groups and agencies of the Third Reich. Unfortunately, this same organizational arrangement makes it extremely difficult and time-consuming to pursue a non-biographical or non-quantitative research problem. Nevertheless, the collections contain information to be found nowhere else—information on institutional, political, social, and economic problems which go well beyond the scope of an individual's involvement or beyond the sociological data which might be compiled from the personnel files. Unfortunately, there are no adequate finding aids for the Document Center, and a general vagueness of knowledge about the full extent of its holdings seems to plague even veteran users and the document center personnel themselves.