"Unusually popular search terms include 'Reichstag fire' and 'Kristallnacht' " - Google search terms

https://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2017/02/theres-a-big-spike-in-google-searches-related-to-world-war-ii/



There’s a big spike in Google searches related to World War II

World War II is having a moment, at least in the minds of people doing Google searches. Google Trends, a tool that measures the popularity of search terms over time, shows that there have been dramatic spikes in searches for topics related to the war, including: Reichstag fire, Pearl Harbor, fascism, Kristallnacht, and Nazi Germany.

Searches for “Reichstag fire,” the event that precipitated Adolf Hitler’s declaration of martial law in 1933, peaked worldwide the month after the Brexit vote in England and again in October 2016 before the US election. Those searches eventually reached an exceptional five-year high in the first week of February 2017. In the United States, searches related to the event when Dutch communist Marinus van der Lubbe lit the German parliament building on fire were most popular in Arizona and New Hampshire.

snip

Worldwide searches on Kristallnacht saw a five-year high on November 9 and 10, 2016, the anniversary of the night when tens of thousands of German Jews were deported to death camps. There is always a small upswell of interest in this term every year on the anniversary, but in 2016, searches of the term in the US jumped from the 25-30 range to 100. The annual spike of interest in Pearl Harbor was also dramatically higher than usual, jumping from a previous high of 70 to 100.

Searches on "Nazi Germany" jumped from typical levels of 25-50 to 100 in the first week of November, right before the US election. Worldwide searches for “fascism” also jumped from a baseline of 10 to 55 the week before the US election, but the authoritarian ideology saw an unprecedented spike in the first week of February, with searches for "fascism" jumping from 15-20 to 100 around the world.