Secret Hitler Rules, Explained Simply
Secret Hitler is a social deduction game for 5–10 players, created by Goat, Wolf, & Cabbage (designed by Mike Boxleiter, Tommy Maranges, and Max Temkin, with art by Mackenzie Schubert) and released under a Creative Commons BY-NC-SA 4.0 license. The rulebook is fine, but it takes longer than the game deserves. Here is everything you need to play, in five minutes of reading.
The premise
Players are secretly split into two teams. Liberals are the majority; they know nothing about anyone. Fascists are the minority; they know each other, and they know which player is Hitler. Liberals win by passing liberal policies or killing Hitler. Fascists win by passing fascist policies or by getting Hitler elected Chancellor late in the game. Every round, the table elects a government, and that government passes exactly one policy — but nobody outside the government sees which cards they were holding, so every enacted policy is a fresh argument.
Setup by player count
Deal one secret role card to each player. The mix depends on the table size:
| Players | Liberals | Fascists | Hitler |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5 | 3 | 1 | 1 |
| 6 | 4 | 1 | 1 |
| 7 | 4 | 2 | 1 |
| 8 | 5 | 2 | 1 |
| 9 | 5 | 3 | 1 |
| 10 | 6 | 3 | 1 |
Then everyone closes their eyes for the reveal. The fascists open their eyes and find each other, and Hitler puts a thumb up so the fascists know who to protect. One important wrinkle: in 5–6 player games Hitler also opens his eyes and learns who his one fascist ally is. From 7 players up, Hitler keeps his eyes closed and knows no one.
The policy deck holds 17 cards: 6 liberal and 11 fascist. That bias is deliberate — even an all-liberal government will regularly be forced to pass fascist policies, which gives the real fascists room to hide.
A round, step by step
1 · Nominate
The Presidency rotates clockwise. The President nominates one player as Chancellor (term limits apply — see below).
2 · Vote
Everyone, including the candidates, votes Ja! or Nein! on the proposed government, simultaneously and in public. A majority of Ja! elects the government; a tie fails. If the vote fails, the next player becomes President and the election tracker advances by one.
3 · Legislate
The President draws the top 3 policy cards, secretly discards 1, and hands the remaining 2 to the Chancellor. The Chancellor secretly discards 1 and enacts the other. No table talk during this, and discarded cards are never revealed — both of them are free to lie about what they saw.
4 · Executive action (sometimes)
If the enacted policy was fascist and it filled certain slots on the track, the President immediately uses a presidential power before the round ends. Which slots grant which powers depends on player count — table below.
The election tracker (the chaos rule)
Every failed election advances the tracker. On the third consecutive failure, the country is thrown into chaos: the top policy of the deck is enacted automatically, with no government and no presidential power. The tracker then resets, and all term limits are forgotten for the next election. The tracker also resets whenever a government is successfully elected. Fascists love stalling votes when the deck is hot; watch who keeps voting Nein! at convenient moments.
Presidential powers
Fascist policies hurt the liberals on the track, but they also arm the President. The powers, by player count and fascist-policy number:
| Fascist policy # | 5–6 players | 7–8 players | 9–10 players |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1st | — | — | Investigate loyalty |
| 2nd | — | Investigate loyalty | Investigate loyalty |
| 3rd | Policy peek | Special election | Special election |
| 4th | Execution | Execution | Execution |
| 5th | Execution + veto unlocks | Execution + veto unlocks | Execution + veto unlocks |
- Investigate loyalty — the President secretly looks at one player's party membership card (it says Liberal or Fascist; Hitler's says Fascist). The President can lie about what they saw.
- Policy peek — the President secretly looks at the top 3 cards of the deck.
- Special election — the President picks the next President. Normal rotation resumes afterwards.
- Execution — the President kills one player. That player is out and says nothing. If it was Hitler, liberals win on the spot.
Veto power
Once the 5th fascist policy is enacted, every future government gains the veto. During legislation the Chancellor may propose discarding both cards; if the President agrees, nothing is enacted and the election tracker advances by one. If the President refuses, the Chancellor must enact a policy as usual.
Term limits
The most-forgotten rule in the game: the players who were last elected President and Chancellor are both ineligible to be nominated as Chancellor in the next election. When only five or fewer players are alive, this loosens — only the last elected Chancellor is ineligible. There are no limits on being President, since that rotates automatically.
How the game ends
- Liberals win when the 5th liberal policy is enacted.
- Liberals win the moment Hitler is executed.
- Fascists win when the 6th fascist policy is enacted.
- Fascists win if Hitler is elected Chancellor after 3 or more fascist policies are on the track. This is why, late in the game, you never elect a Chancellor you haven't cleared.
The one rule that decides most games: after the third fascist policy, every Chancellor election is a potential instant loss for the liberals. Say it out loud at the table every time. The groups that forget this are the groups that lose to a quiet player nobody bothered to investigate.
Don't want to manage cards and envelopes?
Fair warning: this part is about our own app. Service Rat is a free mobile reskin of these exact mechanics with original corporate theming — President becomes CEO, Chancellor becomes Chief Engineer, policies become blueprints, and Hitler becomes the Rat. Same 6-vs-11 deck, same powers table, same win conditions, same term limits. The difference is that the app deals the roles, runs the eyes-closed reveal, counts the votes, and enforces every rule above automatically, on one phone or across devices online. How to Play Service Rat shows exactly how the terms map; and if you'd rather survey the whole genre first, see 10 games like Secret Hitler.
5–10 players, free, no account, works offline with bots. The rules above, minus the rulebook.