1933

January 30

Hitler becomes Chancellor.

February 27

The Reichstag fire.

March 9

Himmler is appointed chief of police in Munich.

March 22

First SS concentration camp—Dachau—is established.

March 23

Reichstag passes the Enabling Act, providing Hitler with the legal authority for dictatorship.

April 1-4

Official nationwide boycott of Jewish businesses and professionals.

April 7

Jews are expelled from the civil service in the first of what would eventually be some 400 anti-Jewish laws.

April 11

Definitions of "Aryan" and "non-Aryan" are adopted.

April 26

Gestapo is established.

May 10

Books by Jews and opponents of the Nazis are publicly burned.

July 14

Opposition parties are outlawed.

July 20

In Rome, a concordat is signed between the Vatican and the Third Reich.

October 19

Germany quits the League of Nations.

1934

January 26

Germany and Poland sign a ten-year pact of non-aggression.

April 1

Himmler is appointed to head the SS.

April 20

Himmler is appointed to head the Gestapo.

June 30 - July 2

Purge of the SA, including the murder of its head, Ernst Röhm.

July 9

Himmler appointed to head the Staatliches Konzentrationlager.

July 20

SS becomes an independent organization (it had been under control of the police); Himmler is appointed its chief.

August 2

President Paul von Hindenberg dies. Hitler becomes "Führer and Reichskanzer." Armed forces are required to swear loyalty to him.

1935

September 15

Nuremberg laws: the Reich Citizenship Law (abolishing the Jews’ civic equality) and the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honor (declaring the Jews an inferior race and segregating them from the rest of the population).

1936

July

Berlin hosts the summer Olympics.

1937

March 14

Pius XI’s encyclical "With Deep Anxiety," condemning the Nazis’ "idolatrous cult of Volk and race."

July 6

Buchenwald established.

September 7

Hitler declares an end to the Versailles Treaty.

1938

March 12-13

Anschluss: the annexation of Austria.

September 29-30

Munich Agreement between Hitler, Mussolini, Great Britain, and France permits Germany to annex part of Czechoslovakia.

October 20-21

First deportation of Jews to Poland from Vienna, Hamburg, and Prague.

November 7

Hershl Grynszpan, a 17-year-old Jewish student whose parents had just been expelled from Germany, assassinates Ernst vom Rath, a third secretary in the German embassy in Paris.

November 9-10

Kristallnacht pogroms: under encouragement from Joseph Göbbels and tacit agreement of Hitler, Jewish property is looted and destroyed on the pretext of revenge for vom Rath.

1939

August 23

In Moscow, a Soviet-German non-aggression pact is signed.

September 1

Germany invades Poland.

September 3

Great Britain and France declare war on Germany.

September 17

Red Army invades eastern Poland.

September 21

Reinhard Heydrich, second in command of the SS, orders the creation of Jewish ghettos and Judenräte in occupied Poland.

November 23

Jews in occupied Poland are required to wear yellow stars of David.

1940

Early January

Experimental gassing—of mental patients, Jews, a few others—begins.

January-February

Jewish youth movements organize underground resistance in Poland.

February 12

Deportation of German Jews begins.

April 27

Himmler orders that a camp be set up at Auschwitz in Poland.

May 1

Lodz Ghetto is sealed.

May 20

Auschwitz is established.

June 4

Order for the creation of the Warsaw Ghetto.

November 15

Warsaw Ghetto is sealed.

1941

May 14

More than 3,600 Jews arrested in Paris.

May 16

Seeing that the French army is defeated, Marshal Philippe Pétain, the "hero of Verdun" in World War I and vice premier of the government, approves French collaboration with Germany.

June 22

Germany attacks the Soviet Union.

July

Majdanek is established.

July 31

Hermann Göring appoints Heydrich to carry out the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question."

September 3

Experimental gassing of Jews at Auschwitz with Zyklon B.

September 28-29

Murder of 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar in the Ukraine.

October 10

Theresienstadt is established.

November 17

Eight Warsaw Jews are executed—first executions for illegal emigration.

December 7

Pearl Harbor.

December 8

Chelmno (near Lodz) is established.

December 11

Germany and Italy declare war on the U.S.

1942

January 20

Wannsee Conference discusses plans for annihilating the Jews of Europe. (Go to the Wannsee Protocol.)

January 21

Jewish resistance groups form in Vilna and Kovno.

February-March

Evacuation of Polish ghettos and deportion of Jews to death camps.

March-July

Death camps Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka begin operations.

March 28

First transport of Jews from Paris to Auschwitz.

June 2

Deportation of German Jews to Theresienstadt begins.

June 23

Beginning of systematic gassing at Auschwitz.

July 22

The Umsiedlung: mass deportation of Warsaw Jews to Treblinka begins—5,000-6,000 Jews daily. By September 21, more than 266,000 Jews have been deported, 96% to the death camp Treblinka. About 30,000 Jews remain legally in the ghetto, with another 30,000 "illegals" living in bunkers.

July 28

Jewish Fighting Organization (Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa or ZOB) created in the Warsaw Ghetto.

September 6

The Kessl (seething pot): all remaining Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto are ordered to report for "registration"—in reality, a major Selektion.

End of September

Deportations cease.

November 2

Germans defeated at El Alamein.

November 19-22

Red Army counterattacks at Stalingrad.

December 10

First transport of German Jews to Auschwitz.

December 17

Allies resolve to punish Nazis responsible for the mass murder of Jews.

1943

January 18-21

Armed resistance begins in Warsaw Ghetto.

April 19

Passover eve: German troops surround the Warsaw Ghetto, in order to liquidate it, but the Fighting Organization resists.

May 10

Remnants of all but two groups of the Fighting Organization escape through the sewers to the "Aryan" side of Warsaw.

May 19

Berlin declared Judenfrei.

Sometime in June

Resistance by Warsaw survivors finally ends. 50,000 are deported to Treblinka, Trawniki, Poniatow, and elsewhere.

June 11

Himmler orders liquidation of all remaining ghettos in Poland and USSR.

August 2

Revolt at Treblinka.

October 2

Danes rescue their country’s Jews from the Nazis.

October 18

First deportation of Jews from Rome to Auschwitz.

November 27

Häftlinge blow up one of the crematoria at Auschwitz.

1944

March 19

Hungary occupied by the Germans.

April 14

Jews of Athens deported to Auschwitz.

April-May

First deportation of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz.

June 6

D-Day: the Allied armies invade Normandy.

July

Majdanek liberated by Russian troops.

July 20

German officers fail in assassination attempt on Hitler.

October 7

Uprising of Sonderkommando at Auschwitz.

End of October

Last gassings in Auschwitz.

November 26

Himmler orders destruction of Auschwitz crematoria.

1945

January 17

Auschwitz evacuated. "Death march" of the Häftlinge.

January 26

Russian troops liberate Auschwitz.

April 11-May 9

The Allies liberate Buchenwald, BergenBelsen, Dachau, Mauthausen, and Theresienstadt.

April 30

Hitler commits suicide.

May 7

Germany surrenders.

1946

September 2

Secretary of State Byrnes announces change in U.S. policy toward Germany, making Russia the chief concern.

1948

June 25

Displaced Persons Commission created by Act of Congress.

October 30

First boatload of war refugees arrives in U.S.

December 9

UN approves Genocide Convention