-
The National Socialist German Workers' Party (The Nazi Party) assumes control of the German state when German President Paul von Hindenburg appoints Nazi Party leader Adolf Hitler as Chancellor at the head of a coalition
-
-
The regime established the first concentration camps, imprisoning its political opponents, homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, and others classified as “dangerous.”
-
Nazi leadership stages an economic boycott targeting Jewish-owned businesses and the offices of Jewish professionals.
-
University students burn upwards of 25,000 “un-German” books in Berlin’s Opera Square.
-
Mandating the involuntary and forced sterilization of certain individuals with physical and mental disabilities or mental illness
-
-
The Nuremberg Race Laws did not identify a “Jew” as someone with particular religious convictions but instead as someone with three or four Jewish grandparents
-
The Summer Olympic Games open in Berlin, attended by athletes and spectators from countries around the world.
-
Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy sign a treaty of cooperation.
-
Japan invades China, initiating World War II in the Pacific.
-
-
On March 11–13, 1938, German troops invade Austria and incorporate Austria into the German Reich in what is known as the Anschluss.
-
Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union sign a nonaggression agreement and a secret codicil dividing eastern Europe into spheres of influence
-
Germany invades Poland, initiating World War II in Europe.
-
Warsaw surrenders on September 27. The Polish government flees into exile via Romania. Germany and the Soviet Union divide Poland between them.
-
-
-
-
-
Nazi Germany and its Axis partners declare war on the United States.
-
On June 6, 1944, under the code name Operation "Overlord," US, British and Canadian troops land on the beaches of Normandy.
-
-
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 worldwide through media channels in Switzerland.
-
-
-
-
-
-
Having agreed in principle to unconditional surrender on August 14, 1945, Japan formally surrenders, ending World War II.
-
British troops defeat the Germans and Italians at El Alamein in Egypt, sending the Axis forces in chaotic retreat across Libya to the eastern border of Tunisia.