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50 free Nazi Germany trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
This Nazi Germany trivia quiz covers the twelve years of the Third Reich, from Hitler's appointment as Chancellor in January 1933 to the surrender of May 1945. It is a history quiz, not a celebration: the questions look at how a democracy was dismantled through the Reichstag fire, the Enabling Act and the Night of the Long Knives; how the regime organised daily life through the Hitler Youth, the Mother's Cross, Strength Through Joy and the KdF-Wagen; and how it built its power on rearmament, the Autobahn and Mefo bills. It also confronts the crimes: the Nuremberg Laws, Kristallnacht, Action T4, the Wannsee Conference and the Holocaust, alongside the war years, the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, Stalingrad, the 20 July plot, the Führerbunker and the Nuremberg trials that followed. Questions range from facts most students know to details that will test serious readers of the period. Every answer is checked against Wikipedia's articles on Nazi Germany and the individual events, and each explanation adds one further fact. Suited to history students, teachers and quiz nights; players looking for the broader conflict should also try our World War 2 quiz.
30 of 50 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933?
President Paul von Hindenburg
The elderly president acted reluctantly under pressure from politicians and industrialists; the Nazis called the day the Machtergreifung, or seizure of power.
Q 02'Third Reich' cast Nazi Germany as heir to the Kaiser's Germany and which earlier realm?
The Holy Roman Empire
The phrase came from Arthur Moeller van den Bruck's 1923 book Das Dritte Reich; the Nazis also spoke of a Thousand-Year Reich, which lasted twelve.
Q 03What was the Nazi Party's share of the federal vote in 1928, before the Depression?
2.6%
By 1930, with millions unemployed, it had jumped to 18.3% and second place in the Reichstag.
Q 04Hitler's failed 1923 coup in Munich is known as what?
The Beer Hall Putsch
Inspired by Mussolini's March on Rome, he marched about 600 SA men on the Bürgerbräukeller alongside General Ludendorff.
Q 05Which book did Hitler write while imprisoned after the 1923 putsch?
Mein Kampf
Volume one appeared in 1925 and volume two in 1926, about 750 pages in all; SS member No. 2 Emil Maurice helped transcribe it.
Q 06A Dutch communist was convicted of setting fire to which building on 27 February 1933?
The Reichstag
Marinus van der Lubbe was blamed, and the next day's Reichstag Fire Decree rescinded most civil liberties and allowed indefinite detention.
Q 07By what vote did the German parliament pass the Enabling Act on 23 March 1933?
444 to 94
It let Hitler's cabinet pass laws without parliament or president; SA intimidation and the fire decree kept opponents away to secure the two-thirds majority.
Q 08On what date did Germany formally become a one-party state?
14 July 1933
The Law Against the Formation of Parties made the Nazi Party the sole legal party after the Social Democrats and Nationalists had been crushed.
Q 09Which SA chief of staff was arrested and shot in the Night of the Long Knives?
Ernst Röhm
Up to 200 people died in the 1934 purge, carried out by the SS and Gestapo; Strasser and former chancellor Schleicher were also killed.
Q 10After Hindenburg died on 2 August 1934, what happened to the office of Reich President?
It was merged with the chancellorship
Hitler became Führer und Reichskanzler, and soldiers and civil servants were made to swear personal oaths of obedience to him.
Q 11Which Deputy Führer's office had to approve all legislation proposed by cabinet ministers?
Rudolf Hess
He could also veto senior civil-service appointments before his bizarre solo flight to Scotland in 1941.
Q 12Who ran the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda?
Joseph Goebbels
His ministry promised peace and plenty in a Marxist-free Germany free of the Versailles constraints.
Q 13How many members did the SS have by 1938 under Heinrich Himmler?
Over 250,000
It began as a small bodyguard unit inside the SA; Himmler had led it since 1929 and its military arm became the Waffen-SS.
Q 21The shooting of diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris in November 1938 was the pretext for which pogrom?
Kristallnacht
SA members destroyed synagogues and Jewish property across Germany and at least 91 German Jews were murdered in the Night of Broken Glass.
Q 22How many modern artworks were removed from German museums under the Nazi campaign against 'degenerate' art?
About 6,500
The 1937 Degenerate Art exhibition in Munich showed 650 confiscated works as a warning, opposite the Great German Art Exhibition.
Q 23From March 1939 membership of the Hitler Youth became compulsory for children over what age?
Ten
Q 14Which economist devised the Mefo bills used to finance rearmament through deficit spending from 1933?
Hjalmar Schacht
When the promissory notes were presented, the Reichsbank simply printed money; unemployment then stood at 30 per cent.
Q 15How many new jobs did public works projects create in 1934 alone?
1.7 million
Six million people had been unemployed; the Autobahn network was the showpiece project.
Q 16How many troops did Hitler send into the demilitarised Rhineland on 7 March 1936?
3,000
He used the Franco-Soviet treaty as a pretext; Britain and France judged the breach of Versailles not worth a war.
Q 17Which Olympic tradition was invented for the 1936 Berlin Games?
The torch relay from Olympia
They were also the first televised Games; Jesse Owens won four golds while Germany topped the table with 101 medals.
Q 18Which filmmaker made Triumph of the Will and Olympia?
Leni Riefenstahl
Her films documented the 1934 party rally and the 1936 Olympics and pioneered tracking-camera and telephoto techniques.
Q 19Which banner became Germany's sole national flag in September 1935?
The party swastika
The Weimar tricolour had been abolished in 1933, and the party's Horst Wessel Song became a second national anthem.
Q 20The 1935 laws that stripped German Jews of basic rights are named after which city?
Nuremberg
They banned intermarriage and barred Jews from professions such as law, medicine and education.
Girls joined the Jungmädelbund and then the League of German Girls; education stressed racial biology and fitness for service.
Q 24How many children earned a mother the gold Cross of Honour of the German Mother?
Eight or more
Bronze went for four children and silver for six, alongside subsidies for large families.
Q 25Which designer drew up the KdF-Wagen, the 'Strength Through Joy' people's car?
Ferdinand Porsche
A prototype was shown in Berlin in February 1939, but the factory switched to military vehicles and no buyer received one until after the war.
Q 26Which architect built the party rally grounds and the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin?
Albert Speer
His plans for Berlin included a dome modelled on the Pantheon and an arch twice the height of the Arc de Triomphe; neither was built.
Q 27Which country did Germany annex in the Anschluss of 1938?
Austria
Its foreign-exchange reserves and weapons stockpiles were shipped to Germany, and the Reichswerke Hermann Göring took over its steel and coal.
Q 28Which British prime minister signed the Munich Agreement and promised 'peace for our time'?
Neville Chamberlain
Signed on 29 September 1938, it forced Czechoslovakia to give up the Sudetenland; he was cheered on landing in London.
Q 29Which German foreign minister negotiated the August 1939 non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union?
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Secret protocols divided Poland and the Baltic states between the two powers; he was later hanged by the Allies.
Q 30Which Free City did Germany capture on 1 September 1939 as it invaded Poland?
Danzig
Britain and France declared war two days later, and the Soviets attacked Poland from the east on 17 September.