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Night of Broken Glass
A 17 year old Jew in Paris had shot and killed a member of the German Embassy staff there in retaliation for the poor treatment his father and his family suffered at the hands of the Nazis in Germany. Nazi officials then ordered attacks on Jews in Germany, Austria, and Sudetenland as a form of retalliation. In two days, over 250 synagogues were burned, over 7,000 Jewish businesses were trashed and looted and dozens of Jewish people were killed. -
Nazis Establish Auschwitz-Birkenau
Auschwitz was established in Oswiecim, Poland. It was the largest concentration camp across Europe that was diveded into three main areas; it could hold up to 150,000 inmates at a time. From about 2.1 million to 4 million people were murdered at Auschwitz with the majority of them being Jews. The main sources of deaths were of the gas chamber, starvation, forced labor, disease, shooting squads and medical experiments. The camp was liberated in 1945. -
Attack on Pearl Harbor
Japan wanted to take over the Pacific islands and believed with an attack on the US they could take over Hawaii. Planes and submarines attacked Pearl Harbor at 7:51 a.m. At 08:30, a second wave of 170 Japanese aircraft attacked the fleet anchored in Pearl Harbor.In the end, nine U.S. ships were sunk and 21 ships were severely damaged. Around 2,350 lives were lost. -
Hitler Declares War on the US
After Pearl Harbor, the US had officially been a part of the war. Hitler saw the failure of America to overcome the Depression as a sign of weakness. Hitler knew the US were transporting vital supplies to Britain through American ships and unable to attack these vital cargo to Britain's survival due to the Neutral state of the US, he didn't think he had much to lose in declaring war on US. Attacking all shipping in the Atlantic to restricted supplies getting into Britain. -
Wannsee Conference
The meeting took place in Berlin by a lake named Wannsee. At this meeting Nazi leaders made the decision to move toward Hitler's "Final Solution", which was the genocide of all jews. It was the place where the "final solution" was formally revealed to non-Nazi leaders who would help arrange for Jews to be transported from all over German-occupied Europe to SS-operated "extermination" camps in Poland. It was just what sealed the fate of Jewish people. -
Bermuda Conference
This conference was hosted by British and American officials. The purpose was to discuss rescuing surviving Jewish refugees, no action was really taken in the end. The only agreement made during the conference was that the war must be won and the NAzis must be defeated. Both the British and American governments carefully restricted what their del. Bermuda was chosen as a location because wartime regulations restricting access to the island would keep the deliberations out of the public eye. -
Dr. Mengele arrives at Auschwitz
Mengele was not the only physician at Auschwitz, but he was famous for experimenting with identical and fraternal twins in order to trace the genetic origins of various diseases. At Auschwitz, with full license to maim or kill his subjects, Mengele performed a broad range of agonizing and often lethal experiments with Jewish and Roma twins, most of them children.Throughout his stay in Auschwitz, Mengele collected the eyes of his murdered victims. -
Tehran Conference
This conference was a meeting between Roosevelt, Churchill and Stalin. It was the first time for Roosevelt and Churchill to meet Stalin face-to-face. Churchill was the one that was unsure of an attack on Germany even though FDR aggreed with Stalin's plan, but in the end, Chruchill agreed. after the many years of war, they chose to invade France in order to march toward Germany.At the end of the conference, the three were in complete agreement.The invasion of France was called Operation Overload. -
War Refugee Board is Created
The War Refugee Board worked with the Red Cross to save European Jews that were still under Nazi control. Like the Bermuda Conference not much was done; only a few were really saved. Stalin showed little concern of the situation, which made the plan difficult to carry through. It was also unproductive on the fact that the Allies didn't want to pressure Nzai countries to stop the transportation of Jews to Germany. -
Hitler Commits Suicide
Hitler knew he was not doing very well in the war. Therefore, Hitler had a sense of pride and decided he would kill himself before his enemies had the chance to. At that point, Russia had invaded Berlin in search for him, so he rather than live as a failure, he ended his life with some success. He placed a cyanide capsule in his mouth and bit into it as he pulled the trigger to make sure double sure that he died. Hitler died in his Berlin bunker.
