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Almost immediately after the beginning of the outbreak of war, the Nazis began to arrest all those who publicly opposed Germany's chances of winning the war, or the decision to go to war in itself, as commanded by Commander of Security Service, Rienhard Heydrich. -
Germany's invasion of Poland meant that over 1.7 million Jews were now under German rule. Germany imprisoned these people in Jewish Housing estates or "Ghettos". These places had extremely poor living conditions, and became more like prisons for Jewish people. A lack of food, space and medical care resulted in death and suffering for the Jewish. They were not allowed to leave the Ghettos, unless given specific permission, and were in cases forced into labour. -
During the German invasion of Poland and the Soviet Union, the Einsatzgruppen were a group of specialised soldiers tasked with the job of killing Jewish men, communist officials and partisans. Whilst they were initially brought into existence to restrict the possibility of revolt, they committed murders of people that were of no risk to the German war effort. -
In 1940, Auschwitz-Birkenau is created and is initially a quarantine camp for Polish political prisoners. The camp eventually became the largest and most devastating of all German death camps. -
In late 1941, Nazi forces began to construct the first of the extermination camps. Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka were camps created for the sole purpose of the death of Jewish people - they were all exterminated on arrival through the use of diesel fumes. This was done under the code name of Aktion Reinhard, a project that killed over 1.75 million Jews. The camps were eventually destroyed in November 1943. -
In December, 1941, the night and fog laws are ordered by Hitler, and implemented by Chief of the German Armed Forces High Command, Wilhelm Keitel. Within all new German territories, all those who sought to resits the ways of German rule were taken to concentration camps. They were to "disappear into the night and fog", and the families of these people were not to be notified. Over 7000 people were taken in this way. -
The Wansee conference took place between 15 high ranking Nazi officials, and involved discussions surrounding plans to exucute 11 million Jews in Europe, in an attempt to finally lay into action their planned solution to "the Jewish problem". -
During September of 1942, the German Ministry of Justice officialy announces that prisoners were to be subject to "Exterminationn Through Work", essentially prisoners were to be worked to their deaths. -
Following the Nazi loss in the second world war, victims that remain alive in concentration camps are freed and the camps are liberated.