Secret identity games are a distinct sub-genre of party games where participants have secret roles, and are all trying to achieve their goals without alerting anyone of their real intentions or identities. Werewolf and The Resistance are two such games. Secret Hitler combines the best of its predecessors while adding more political machinations through, well, literal political machinations.
Set in Germany in the 1930s, players are members of Germany's government. Most players are liberals in the classical sense, seeking to enact good government policies that promote liberty. However, a minority are fascists out to gain power for their nefarious ends.
Presidency rotates around the table. Each President nominates a Chancellor, and the table votes to determine whether the government is approved. If the vote carries, the President silently draws three policy tiles, discards one, and passes the remaining two to his Chancellor. The Chancellor than discards one of the policies, plays the last, and the accusations begin.
The wooden Chancellor and President placques have reminder instructions printed on the back. Like the rest of the game, these are all well designed with excellent artistic touches. The whole game is a gorgeous retro smorgasbord of visual delight.
Depending on the number of players, the presidential powers unlocked by fascist policies changes. More players means more chaos, which is good in the case of this game. There are three different fascist policy tracks; one for five or six players, one for seven or eight, and one for nine or ten. They are printed with gold foil accents, which I think is a nice touch.
The reverse on each board is an identical liberal policy track, because this does not change. Choose the right fascist board, flip another one over for the liberals, and set the third aside. The liberal policy boards each have a nice silver foil pattern, too.
At the start of the game, each player is assigned a ja and nein ballot card to be flipped when votes need to be cast, and there are envelopes to hold the party membership cards and secret identity cards. Each liberal gets a different portrait, but all are liberals. All but one of the fascists get generic portraits, but there is always one fascist party member who is also Hitler.
The most interesting party of the game is the way the imbalance in numbers in favor of the liberals is countered by a massive imbalance of fascist policies that can be drawn from the policy pile. It is entirely possible for a liberal President to draw three fascist tiles, forcing a liberal Chancellor to play a fascist policy. The liberals gain nothing by lying, but this fact can be used by the sneaky lying fascist bastards to drop accusations, or even if they hold one of the offices, to cast doubt on their erstwhile partner's motives by ditching a liberal policy and accusing the other of being a fascist.
It is this layer of mind games on top of the mechanics that makes this game great, but the best part might be how you can print and play the game yourself! The whole game is licensed under Creative Commons BY–NC–SA 4.0, meaning you can copy it freely if you give attribution and don't sell it. There is even a version for Tabletop Simulator on Steam!
So get out there and kill Hitler! Well, unless you're a dirty fascist, or Secret Hitler!