80 years after V-E Day, a mobile atlas puts 25,000 Nazi crime cases on the map

LANDSBERG AM LECH. For the first time since the Second World War, a fully documented nationwide map of Nazi crimes is only a tap away. Launching today, the Nazi Crimes Atlas — Digitaler Atlas NS-Verbrechen app opens more than 25,000 adjudicated cases at over 8,000 locations across present-day Germany to the public, free of charge and in English and German.

The release coincides with the 80th anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe. It answers requests from American veterans’ families, descendants of Holocaust survivors, educators and researchers for direct access to primary evidence. Whether a U.S. service member helped liberate Dachau, or a grandchild is tracing a survivor’s journey, the atlas puts verified court documents, archival call numbers and concise case summaries in their pocket.

“The core of National Socialism is crime — systematic, bureaucratised, and brutally human,” says Dr habil. Edith Raim, the project’s scholarly director. “By making every proven act visible on a living map, we ensure that anecdotal memory is supported by undeniable facts.”

“Eighty years later, it should be a matter of course that every Nazi crime that led to conviction is just a click away,” says Wolfgang Hauck, initiator and project manager. “As a non-profit organisation, we have transformed thousands of court files into living, public history.”

What is live today

• Cases concerning the November pogroms of 1938 (the pogrom contemporaries were taught to call “Kristallnacht”) — search arrests, arsons and assaults, cross-linked to post-1945 trial files.
• Geolocation mode — stand in any German town and see whether, and how, the Nazi state struck there.
• Bilingual interface — instant English/German toggle designed for classrooms and international audiences.

Coming this year

• Data layers on the “euthanasia” murders of the sick and disabled, political persecution, forced labour and late-war mass killings.
• Community workshops, on site and virtual, enabling local historians to contribute photographs, oral histories and walking-tour material.

Why Landsberg matters

The project office of the NaziCrimesAtlas is in Landsberg am Lech — not in Berlin, Nuremberg or Munich, but in a town of 30,000 inhabitants whose history encapsulates the arc of Nazi crimes and their consequences like few others. It was here that Adolf Hitler wrote Mein Kampf in 1924 while imprisoned; two decades later, Bavaria’s largest network of concentration camp satellite camps was established in the surrounding Kaufering area. Between June 1944 and April 1945, more than 23,000 prisoners were forced to dig huge armament bunkers; today, only fragments of Camp VII remain, preserved by local citizens. After the war, the same town was home to War Criminal Prison No. 1 and a large Displaced Persons camp, making Landsberg a place of reckoning and refuge.

This is why the project came into being in Landsberg. It places digital documentation at the epicentre of crimes whose physical traces are disappearing, and it builds on the work of local citizens, historians and non-profit associations — among them dieKunstBauStelle e. V. — who have kept the memory alive for decades. Film footage shot by US Army liberators near Landsberg can be seen in episode 9 of Band of Brothers; visitors can now complement their journey with verifiable data from the app.

Why it matters to international readers

• Family context: thousands of American soldiers, nurses and relief workers witnessed these crimes first-hand; their relatives can now pinpoint exact incidents.
• Teaching resources: ready-to-use citations and map views fit any school or university curriculum on genocide, law or military history.
• Digital preservation: as the generation of eyewitnesses passes on, verified documents remain — the atlas keeps them searchable, shareable and impossible to deny.

Project and funding

Developed by the non-profit dieKunstBauStelle e. V. (Landsberg am Lech) with berlinHistory e. V. Funded by Germany’s Foundation “Remembrance, Responsibility and Future” (EVZ) and the Federal Ministry of Finance under the Education Agenda on Nazi Injustice.

Download and media

• App stores: iOS and Android — search “NaziCrimesAtlas”
• Trailer: https://vimeo.com/1079008101
• Website and press kit: https://nazicrimesatlas.org/en/press/
• Press photos: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/zoyxuyfg6fljtpmntyr43/ABTnlW6Co-YvJvUH6NLVfJI?rlkey=aia0n836i0fhnpg3wkpjxcq54&dl=0