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President Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
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SS opens the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich
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Boycott of Jewish-owned shops and businesses in Germany
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Law for the Reestablishment of the Professional Civil Service removes Jewish from government service and Law on the Admission to the Legal Profession forbids the admission of Jews to the bar
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Nazi book burnings
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Law for the Preventino of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases, which called for the sterilization of all persons who suffered from diseases considered hereditary.
... including mental illness, learning disabilities, physical deformity, epilepsy, blindness, deafness, and severe alcoholism. With the law's passage the Third Reich also stepped up its propaganda against the disabled, regularly labeling them "life unworthy of life" or "useless eaters" and highlighting their burden upon society. -
President Von Hindenburg Dies
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Germany introduces military conscription
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Nuremberg Race Laws established, defining a Jew as someone who has three or four Jewish grandparents
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German troops march unopposed into the French-occupied Rhineland
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Germany incorporates Austria in the Anschluss (Union)
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Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement which forces the Czechoslovak Republic to cede the Sudetenland, including key Czechoslovakian military defensive positions, to Nazi Germany.
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Kristallnacht
a Nazi pogrom throughout Germany and Austria on the night of November 9–10, 1938, during which Jews were killed and their property destroyed. Also known as the Night of Broken Glass. -
n a speech to the Reichstag, Hitler threatens the extermination of Europe’s Jews in the event of war.
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The St. Louis sets sail from Hamburg, Germany to Havana, Cuba
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Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Agreement: Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a nonaggression agreement and a secret codicil dividing Eastern Europe into spheres of influence.
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Germany invades Poland, starting World War II in Europe
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Aktion T4, the extermination of the handicapped begins
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The Soviet Union occupies Poland from the east
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Heydrich orders the deportation of Jews, Poles, and Gypsies from German- occupied Poland.
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Germans establish a ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland
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Jews who are living in the General Government are required to wear a blue Star of David on a white armband.
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The first gas chamber is used to killed handicapped patients at Brandenburg.
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Germany invades Denmark and Norway
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Germany attacks Belgium, France, Luxemburg, and the Netherlands
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Battle of Britain begins
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Himmler orders the creation of a concentration camp at Auschwitz.
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Warsaw ghetto is established.
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Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece
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Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) given orders to exterminate Jews during the Soviet invasion.
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Germany invades the Soviet Union
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Einsatzgruppen shoot nearly 3,000 Jews at the Seventh Fort, one of the 19th-century fortifications surrounding Kovno
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Cardinal August Count von Galen of Muenster denounces the “euthanasia” killing program in a public sermon
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The Germans establish the Kovno Ghetto in Lithuania
July-August 15 -
Himmler issues a decree halting all Jewish emigration from greater Germany.
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Einsatzgruppen shoot about 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar, outside Kiev, Ukraine (USSR)
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Einsatzgruppen round up 13,000 Jews from the Minsk ghetto and kill them in nearby Tuchinki (Tuchinka)
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Five trainloads of German Jews are massacred after arriving in Kovno, Lithuania.
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Einsatzgruppen shoot 10,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto in the Rumbula Forest
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Soviet winter counteroffensive
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Japan bombs Pearl Harbor, and the U.S. declares war the next day
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The first killing operations begin at Chelmno in occupied Poland
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The first killing operations begin at Chelmno in occupied Poland
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Nazi Germany declares war on the United States
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Germans begin the mass deportation of more than 65,000 Jews and 5,007 Gypsies from Lodz to the Chelmno killing center
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Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, Germany for German officials to discuss the Final Solution of the Jewish Question
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Germans begin the deportation of 64,759 Jews from Drancy, an internment camp outside Paris, to the east (primarily to Auschwitz)
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Germany launches a new offensive towards the city of Stalingrad
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Germans begin mass deportations of nearly 100,000 Jews from the occupied Netherlands to the east (primarily to Auschwitz)
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Germans begin the mass deportation of over 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center
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Germans complete the mass deportation of about 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka
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Soviet troops counterattack at Stalingrad, trapping the German Sixth Army in the city
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Warsaw ghetto uprising begins
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Rescue of Jews in Denmark
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Soviet troops liberate Kiev
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Germans forces occupy Hungary
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Germans begin the mass deportation of about 440,000 Jews from Hungary
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D-Day: Allied forces invade Normandy, France
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The Soviets launch an offensive in eastern Belorussia (Belarus)
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Anglo-American forces break out of Normandy
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Polish Home Army uprising begins in Warsaw
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Allied forces land in southern France
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Liberation of Paris
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Battle of the Bulge
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Soviet winter offensive
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Death March of nearly 60,000 prisoners from the Auschwitz camp system in southern Poland
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Death March of nearly 50,000 prisoners from the Stutthof camp system in northern Poland
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Soviet troops liberate the Auschwitz camp complex
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U.S. troops cross the Rhine River at Remagen
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The Soviets launch their final offensive, encircling Berlin
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American forces liberate the Dachau concentration camp
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Adolf Hitler commits suicide
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Germany surrenders to the Western Allies
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V-E Day (Victory in Europe)
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Germany surrenders to the Soviets
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V-J Day (Victory in Japan)
