NR Nazi ReportSeven Circles of Responsibility

Evidence-based historical archive

Nazi crimes in Europe: perpetrators, institutions, mechanisms

Nazi Report’s 273 profiles document the machinery of Nazi crimes within the German Reich, in annexed and occupied territories, and in states allied with Nazi Germany. Occupied Poland remains the archive’s principal area of research. The seven circles trace the chain from decision and regional authority to administration, police operations, logistics and postwar accountability; they describe function and agency, not a ranking by victim numbers.

273 profiles
7 circles of responsibility
1945–today · trials and accountability

This website documents crimes to preserve memory and provide a warning. It condemns Nazism and every form of totalitarianism.

Diagram of the seven circles of responsibility — select a circle to open its profiles Circle VII — Inciters and local perpetrators (24 profiles) Circle VI — Enablers of war and occupation (68 profiles) Circle V — Operational commanders (95 profiles) Circle IV — Territorial rulers and programme chiefs (54 profiles) Circle III — Designers of the machinery of destruction (23 profiles) Circle II — Strategic core of the regime (8 profiles) ICircle I — Supreme architect (1 profile) VII VI V IV III II
  1. ISupreme architectThe initiator and supreme decision-maker who made aggressive war, racial persecution and mass murder state policy. · 1 profile
  2. IIStrategic core of the regimeSenior leaders of the state, party, SS, police, armed forces and propaganda apparatus who shaped and coordinated criminal policy. · 8 profiles
  3. IIIDesigners of the machinery of destructionOfficials who designed and managed central systems of deportation, mass killing, concentration camps, forced labour and security policing. · 23 profiles
  4. IVTerritorial rulers and programme chiefsOccupation rulers and leaders of defined programmes who translated central policy into regional orders, displacement, exploitation and terror. · 54 profiles
  5. VOperational commandersCommanders who directed camps, killing units, police formations and other operations in which persecution and mass violence were carried out. · 95 profiles
  6. VIEnablers of war and occupationMinisters, officers, judges, administrators and industrial managers whose laws, resources and professional decisions enabled criminal policy. · 68 profiles
  7. VIIInciters and local perpetratorsPropagandists and local perpetrators who incited persecution or exercised coercion and violence at the point of implementation. · 24 profiles

How to read the circles

The division into circles is conceptual and interpretive. It organises perpetrators by level of authority, function, agency and relationship to the machinery of crime. It is neither a legal category nor a ranking based on fixed numbers: victim estimates indicate orders of magnitude, perpetrators’ responsibilities overlap and must not be added together. Read the full methodology.

Every profile in this archive names the acts for what they were: crimes against humanity, war crimes and genocide. We document them with the victims — not the perpetrators — at the centre.

Guide to the archive

Archive atlas

Browse every profile alphabetically and by mechanisms of the machinery of crime, without comparing victim totals.

Timeline

Follow the history from the rise of the NSDAP through the Holocaust to trials in Nuremberg, Poland, Jerusalem and Frankfurt.

Glossary

Understand the SS, Gestapo, RSHA, Einsatzgruppen, the “Final Solution”, Operation Reinhard and other terms in context.

Memory of the victims

Explore groups persecuted by Nazi Germany, historical estimates, context and institutions of remembrance.

Sources and methodology

Learn how the archive was built, where its data and materials come from, and how rights and licences are handled.