Nazi Germany Trivia
0Loading crowd target
0Loading crowd target
8correct to beat the crowd
97 free Nazi Germany trivia questions with answers — history quiz, new questions added Oct 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 97 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01Who appointed Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany on 30 January 1933?
President Paul von Hindenburg
President Paul von Hindenburg had beaten Hitler in the 1932 presidential runoff, then appointed him chancellor months later.
Q 02'Third Reich' cast Nazi Germany as heir to the Kaiser's Germany and which earlier realm?
The Holy Roman Empire
The Holy Roman Empire was the first Reich in the 1923 book that supplied the slogan; its author had rejected Hitler for his 'proletarian primitiveness'.
Q 03Hitler's failed 1923 coup in Munich is known as what?
The Beer Hall Putsch
The Beer Hall Putsch ended when police fired on the marchers, yet judges gave Hitler the lightest allowable sentence and freed him within a year.
Q 04Which book did Hitler write while imprisoned after his failed 1923 coup?
Mein Kampf
Mein Kampf sold slowly at first, but once Hitler came to power it became a bestseller in Germany.
Q 05A 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 06With Communist deputies barred, which party alone voted against Hitler's 1933 Enabling Act?
The Social Democrats
The Social Democrats cast all 94 no votes, and their leader Otto Wels spoke against the act while SA men stood inside the chamber.
Q 07Which Nazi term named the drive, from 1933, to put every part of German society under party control?
Gleichschaltung
Gleichschaltung ('coordination') saw SA men seize union offices on 2 May 1933; by 14 July every party except the Nazis had been banned or dissolved.
Q 08Which SA chief of staff was arrested and shot in the Night of the Long Knives?
Ernst Röhm
Ernst Röhm was given a pistol in his cell and told to kill himself; when he did not, he was shot.
Q 09When Germany's president died in August 1934, what happened to his office?
It was merged with the chancellorship
It was merged with the chancellorship, and soldiers now had to swear unconditional obedience to Hitler personally.
Q 10Which Nazi leader, whose office approved most new laws, flew solo to Scotland in 1941?
Rudolf Hess
Rudolf Hess parachuted into Scotland hoping to broker peace, was arrested at once, and was later sentenced to life in prison.
Q 11Who ran the Ministry of Public Enlightenment and Propaganda?
Joseph Goebbels
Joseph Goebbels was named chancellor in Hitler's will, and the next day he and his wife killed themselves after poisoning their six children.
Q 12Which Nazi force grew from Hitler's bodyguard unit into one of the regime's most powerful bodies?
The SS
The SS, led by Heinrich Himmler from 1929, had begun as a small unit under the SA, the stormtroopers whose power it later took over.
Q 13Which economist devised the Mefo bills used to finance Nazi rearmament through deficit spending?
Hjalmar Schacht
Hjalmar Schacht was later sent to concentration camps after the 1944 bomb plot, and the Allied war-crimes tribunal acquitted him.
Q 21Which 1937 Munich exhibition put modern art seized from German museums on show?
Degenerate Art
Degenerate Art drew more than two million visitors, several times the crowd at the approved Great German Art Exhibition nearby.
Q 22Which youth gangs in western Germany defied the Hitler Youth and fought its members?
Edelweiss Pirates
Edelweiss Pirates rejected the Hitler Youth's drill: boys and girls hiked together, and members risked arrest by the Gestapo.
Q 23Which Nazi association, founded by Himmler in 1935, ran maternity homes for single mothers deemed racially suitable?
Lebensborn
Lebensborn ('Fount of Life') was meant to raise Germany's falling birth rate, and in wartime it took part in kidnapping foreign children.
Q 14Which American athlete won four gold medals at the 1936 Berlin Olympics?
Jesse Owens
Jesse Owens won the 100m, 200m, long jump and 4x100m, yet host Germany still topped the medal table.
Q 15Which demilitarised region did Hitler send troops into in March 1936, breaking the Versailles Treaty?
The Rhineland
The Rhineland reoccupation broke the Locarno Treaties as well, yet Britain and France took no military action against it.
Q 16Which Olympic ritual was invented for the 1936 Berlin Games?
The torch relay
The torch relay had no ancient precedent: organiser Carl Diem devised it, carrying a flame lit at Olympia to Berlin, and it became a lasting tradition.
Q 17Which filmmaker made Triumph of the Will and Olympia?
Leni Riefenstahl
Leni Riefenstahl was ruled a Nazi 'fellow traveller' after the war, then reinvented herself photographing the Nuba of Sudan and filming underwater.
Q 18Which banner became Germany's sole national flag in September 1935?
The party swastika
The party swastika became the sole flag weeks after New York protesters tore one from the liner Bremen, an incident that may have prompted the change.
Q 19The 1935 laws that stripped German Jews of basic rights are named after which city?
Nuremberg
Nuremberg lent its name because Hitler called parliament into a special session at the Nazi Party rally there to pass the laws.
Q 20The November 1938 shooting of diplomat Ernst vom Rath in Paris was the pretext for which Nazi action?
Kristallnacht
Kristallnacht's victims were made to pay: German Jews were fined one billion Reichsmarks and their insurance payouts were confiscated.
Q 24Which designer drew up the KdF-Wagen, the 'Strength Through Joy' people's car?
Ferdinand Porsche
Ferdinand Porsche's car took savers' money, but the factory switched to military vehicles and none were sold until after the war, as the Volkswagen.
Q 25Which architect built the party rally grounds and the new Reich Chancellery in Berlin?
Albert Speer
Albert Speer later ran war production as armaments minister, and after the war he served 20 years in prison.
Q 26Which country did Germany annex in the Anschluss of 1938?
Austria
Austria's chancellor Kurt Schuschnigg had called a referendum on independence, but Hitler forced its cancellation and German troops crossed the border unopposed.
Q 27Which British prime minister signed the Munich Agreement and promised 'peace for our time'?
Neville Chamberlain
Neville Chamberlain's deal handed Hitler part of Czechoslovakia, yet in March 1939 Germany occupied the rest of the country.
Q 28Which German foreign minister negotiated the August 1939 non-aggression pact with the Soviet Union?
Joachim von Ribbentrop
Joachim von Ribbentrop's pact had a secret protocol dividing Poland, and within weeks both Germany and the Soviet Union had invaded it.
Q 29Which Free City did Germany capture on 1 September 1939 as it invaded Poland?
Danzig
Danzig's Polish depot at Westerplatte was shelled by the battleship Schleswig-Holstein on 1 September, and its small garrison held out for seven days.
Q 30What was the German name for the tactic of quick coordinated assaults that avoided enemy strong points?
Blitzkrieg
Blitzkrieg was never official German military doctrine, and after the failed invasion of the Soviet Union Hitler denied ever using the word.