The public opinion reports of the nazi party

An important, if little publicized, function of the totalitarian party is to provide the leaders of the regime with up-to-date information on the state of public opinion. The captured archives of the Third Reich now offer some insight into the manner in which the Nazi Party discharged this function. Here is an examination of the scope and quality of the Nazi Party's reporting system, based, in the main, upon the reports of local and regional party functionaries, and, in part, upon a comparison of these reports with similar materials from the records of Nazi security agencies.