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Hitler appointed Chancellor
Hitler is made chancellor of Germany. The Jewish population at the time is only 566,000. -
Dachau concentration camp opens
The SS establishes the first concentration camp, used to incarcerate political opponents. Between 1933 and 1945, 188,000 prisoners would be held here, with at least 28,000 confirmed deaths during World War II. The camp was also the last camp to be liberated. In addition to its primary function, the camp was also an SS training center, and had a dedicated medical experimentation ward. -
Nazi Boycott of Jewish Shops
The boycott was presented as a reprisal against bad international press that the Nazi government had received. They promoted the idea that Jewish infiltrators aided foreigners in damaging Germany's reputation. SA officers stood in front of businesses and wrote anti-Semitic slogans. Although the initial boycott only lasted one day and was largely ignored, it marked the beginning of Nazi persecutions against Jews -
First Racial Definition
The first attempt by the Nazi Party to define an ethnic Jew. Radical Nazis wanted the definition to include anyone with a single Jewish grandparent, while the more pragmatic members wanted a more lenient definition that only classified those with three or more grandparents. The final definitions would only be decided on in the Nuremberg Laws of 1935. -
Law Against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities
This law limited the number of Jewish students in public schools to no more than 1.5% of the total student body. Exceptions were only offered to those with an immediate family member who was a WWI veteran. Later, in 1938, all Jewish children would be banned from public schools and Kindertransports would send Jewish children to other countries, without their parents. In 1942 all Jewish private schools would be shut down. -
Book Burnings
University students burn more than 25,000 "un-German" books in Berlin's Opernplatz. Around 40,000 people come to hear Joseph Goebbels deliver an address denouncing decadence and moral corruption. This burning, and others like it in other major German cities marked an effort to align German arts and culture (Gleichschaltung). Books by controversial authors such as Helen Keller, Karl Marx, Berthold Brecht, and Ernest Hemmingway were seen as dangerous to the Nazi government and were destroyed. -
Law for Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases
this law mandated the forced sterilization of any individual with physical and/or mental disabilities. It also provided the basis for involuntary sterilization of undesirable groups such as Roma or Afro-Germans. A Hereditary Health Court made up of two doctors and a judge would hold a trial, and would authorize the sterilization of any person they deemed to be mentally unfit. It is estimated that between 300-400,000 people were victims of this program. -
Law Against Habitual and Dangerous Criminals
Courts were given the authority to indefinitely imprison repeat offenders, and castrate sex offenders. Under the scope of this law, beggars, the homeless, alcoholics, and the unemployed were sent to concentration camps. Also under the guise of "sex offenders", this law would allow for the first persecutions of homosexuals. -
Ban on Jehovah's Witnesses
Jehovah's Witnesses refused to swear fealty to the state or serve in the armed forces, which had them labelled as a threat to the Nazi state. In addition, their proselytization was seen as an act of rebellion. More than 1400 Jehovah's Witnesses were sent to concentration camps, and around 250 were executed by military tribunals for refusing to serve in the army. -
Nuremberg Laws Passed
The Nuremberg Laws (or Laws for the Protection of German Blood and Honor) codified the legal framework for condemning German Jews. They were deprived of citizenship, and given the status of "subjects" in Hitler's Reich. The definition of a "full Jew" was settled on three Jewish grandparents. Those with less were designated as Michlinge. A dozen supplemental decrees would later be passed with the aim of depriving Jews of their basic human rights. -
Buchenwald Concentration Camp Opens
SS open Buchenwald for male prisoners in central-east Germany, with women brought in beginning in late 1943. Buchenwald was one of the largest concentration camps within Germany, with an electrified barbed-wire fence, watchtowers, and a chain of sentries outfitted with machine guns. Most early inmates were political prisoners, but in the aftermath of Kristallnacht the SS sent almost 10,000 Jews. Recidivist criminals, asocial people, and other undesirables were also interned in Buchenwald. -
Law on the Alteration of Family and Personal Names
Required German Jews to identify themselves in ways that would permanently separate them from the German populace. All Jewish men with non-German forenames were forced to add "Israel", and for women "Sara". German Jews were forced to carry identity cards indicating their heritage, stamped with a red letter J. As war loomed, anti-semitic persecution against the Jews quickened. -
Kristrallnacht
Nazi officials, SA members, and the Hitler Youth carry out a wave of anti-Jewish pogroms throughout Greater Germany. Hundreds of synagogues were destroyed, many in full view of firefighters, and more than 7,000 Jewish-owned businesses were looted. 100 German Jews were killed, and in the following weeks the Nazis passed laws depriving Jews of property and livelihood to intensify persecution and force them to emigrate. -
St. Louis leaves Hamburg
Ship carrying over 900 Jewish refugees leaves Hamburg for Havana. They had all applied for American visas, and hoped to only stay in Cuba until they could leave. However, Cuba, the USA, and Canada all denied the ship entry, and it was forced to return to Europe. After difficult negotiations spearheaded by the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee the ship docked in Antwerp and the remaining passengers were accepted by the UK, France, Belgium, and the Netherlands. -
German Invasion of Poland
Germany invades Poland, initiating WWII. German forces broke Polish border defenses and quickly advanced on Warsaw. After a month of shelling Warsaw surrendered, and Poland was split between Russia and Germany. Britain and France retaliated with declarations of war on September 3. After Poland's defeat, Germany began enforcing racial policies against Polish Jews. They were required to wear white armbands with a blue Star of David, conscripted for forced labor, and expelled hundreds of thousands. -
Auschwitz Camp Established
SS authorities established Auschwitz concentration camp, the largest of its kind in the Nazi Regime. Included three main camps, I, II (Birkenau), and III (Monowitz, IG Farben). While I was mainly bureaucratic and III mostly for labour, II functioned mainly as a killing center. The camps were located 37 miles west of Krakow, in the town of Oswiecim. In late 1944, Auchwitz I and II merged. -
Sealing of the Warsaw Ghetto
The Nazi government began to use ghettos to separate the Jewish population after the fall of Poland. They used already existing neighborhoods to sort out and exile Polish Jews. In late 1940, the ghetto is sealed, the largest in both area and population, confining over 300,000 people (30% of the population) in 1.3 square miles (2.4% of the city area). -
Operation Barbarossa
Nazi government launches a surprise attack against the Soviet Union, advancing hundreds of miles in the period of a year. Soon after the invasian, mobile killing units began the mass murder of Soviet Jews. The speed of the occupation, and the massive new numbers of Jews under Nazi rule led to the shift in rhetoric leading to the "Final Solution". -
Euthanasia Killings
Responding to public protest by the Catholic Archbishop of Munster, Clemens von Galen, Hitler orders the end of centrally-coordinated euthanasia. Up to this data, around 70,000 people were killed at "euthanasia' centers. The operations would continue however, involving adults and children with physical/mental disabilities. The call to end T4 programs did not mean an end to the euthansia operation, and the killings were continued in August 1942, albeit more concealed than before -
Jewish Star of David
Under the order of Reinhard Heydrich, all Jews over six years of age in the Reich, Bohemia-Moravia, and the German-annexed part of Poland are to wear the yellow Star of David at all times. The word "Jew" is inscribed inside the star in the local language. The badge was a key element in the larger plan to persecute and eventually annihilate the Jewish population of Europe. The badge was not just used to stigmatize and humiliate Jews, but to segregate them and prepare them for deportation. -
Wannsee Conference
A closed door meeting of the Nazi elite, where a plan is coordinated to implement a European-wide "Final Solution". This was a code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of all European Jews. -
Death Penalty for Aiding Jews
Jews in hiding and their protectors risked severe punishment if captured. In much of German-occupied Eastern Poland, such activities were deemed capital offenses. On September 5th, 1942, the first major deportations from the Warsaw Ghetto to Treblinka were made, signifying the implementation of the "Final Solution". From this point on, the harboring of Jews would be met with severe repercussions. -
Liquidation of the Krakow Ghetto
From March 13-16, 1943, SS and local police liquidate the Krakow Ghetto. During the operation, approximately 2,000 Jews are killed and another 2,000 (The members and families of the Judenrat, and the Jewish Police Force) are transferred to Plaszow Concentration Camp. 3,000 more Jews are sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau, where just under 500 men and 50 women are taken for forced labor. The rest are murdered in the gas chambers. -
Warsaw Ghetto Uprising
German forces intended to liquidate the Warsaw ghetto beginning on April 19, 1943, the eve of Passover. When SS and police entered the ghetto, the streets were deserted. Nearly all the residents had gone into hiding, as the renewal of Jewish deportations to death camps triggered an armed uprising within the ghetto. Though vastly outnumbered and outgunned, individuals and small groups of Jews hid or fought the Germans for almost a month. -
Operation Harvest Festival
SS and police implement Operation Harvest Festival, the murder of Jewish laborers in concentration camp Lublin/Majdanek and forced labor camps Trawniki and Poniatowa. Uprisings at Treblinka and Sobibor, as well as the Warsaw, Bialystok and Vilna ghettos led to increased concerns of Jewish resistance, so Himmler ordered the murder of all surviving Jews in the Lublin area. Music was played through loudspeakers to drown out the shootings. The Majdanek killing was the largest massacre in the war. -
Deportation of Hungarian Jews
From May 15 to July 9, 1944, Hungarian officials under SS guidance deported 440,000 Jews from Hungary. Most were deported to Auschwitz where, upon arrival and after selection, SS functionaries killed the majority of them in gas chambers. Thousands were also sent to the Austrian border to be deployed digging fortification trenches. By the end of July 1944 the only Jewish community left in Hungary was that of Budapest, the capital. -
Auschwitz Report
Between June 18 and 22, 1944, the Auschwitz Report, written by two Slovak Jewish prisoners who escaped from Auschwitz on April 7, 1944, and composed a report in Slovak by the end of April, goes public through Swiss media channels. In April 1944 Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzler escaped Auschwitz and wrote a report providing some of the first reliable eyewitness testimony. A Romanian diplomat received a copy of it, recognized its importance, and distributed it to Swiss Protestant clergy. -
Soviet Forces Liberate Auschwitz
The Soviet Army enters Auschwitz, Birkenau, and Monowitz, liberating around 7,000 prisoners, most of whom are sick or dying. In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached Auschwitz, the SS began evacuating, forcing nearly 60,000 prisoners to march westward. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began. -
Liberation of Bergen-Belsen
The 63rd Anti-Tank Regiment and the 11th Armoured Division liberate 60,000 prisoners at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. As it drove into Germany, it occupied the camp in accordance with an agreement with the retreating Germans to surrender the camp peacefully. When the soldiers entered the camp, they were totally unprepared for what they found. Inside were 60,000 emaciated and ill prisoners in desperate need of medical attention. More than 13,000 corpses lay littered around the camp. -
Liberation of Dachau
The 42nd/45th Infantry Divisions and 20th Armored Division of the US Army liberate around 32,000 prisoners at Dachau. As American forces approached, there were 67,665 prisoners in Dachau and its subcamps (43,350 were political prisoners and 22,100 were Jews) More than 7,000 (mainly Jewish) prisoners were forced on a death march to Tegernsee in the south. Anyone who could no longer continue was shot. As the Americans arrived, they found more than 30 railroad cars filled with bodies outside Dachau -
German Surrender
German armed forces surrender unconditionally. Soviet forces had encircled Berlin on April 25. The same day, Soviet forces linked up with their American counterparts attacking from the west. After heavy fighting, Soviet forces neared Hitler's command bunker, and on April 30 Hitler and other high-ranking Nazis (Goebbels) committed suicide. Within days, Berlin fell to the Soviets. The German western armies capitulated on May 7th; the eastern on May 9th. V-E Day was proclaimed on May 8th. -
International Military Tribunal
A military tribunal in Nuremberg tries 21 (of 24 indicted) major Nazi German leaders on crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit each; It is the first time tribunals are used as a postwar mechanism for bringing national leaders to justice. The word genocide is not included in the indictment, but as a descriptive term. Two defendants are charged with propaganda activities, marking the first time in history an international court prosecuted propagandists.