January 30, 1933
President Hindenburg appoints Adolf Hitler Chancellor of Germany.
March 20, 1933
SS opens the Dachau concentration camp outside of Munich.
April 1, 1933
Boycott of Jewish-owned shops and businesses in Germany.
April 7, 1933
Law for the Reestablishment of the Professional Civil Service.
July 14, 1933
Law for the Prevention of Progeny with Hereditary Diseases.
September 15, 1935
Nuremberg Race Laws.
March 16, 1935
Germany introduces military conscription.
March 7, 1936
German troops march unopposed into the Rhineland.
August 1, 1936
Summer Olympics begin in Berlin.
March 11-13, 1938
Germany incorporates Austria in the Anschluss (Union).
November 9/10, 1938
Kristallnacht (nationwide pogrom View This Term in the Glossary in Germany).
May 13, 1939
The St. Louis sails from Hamburg, Germany.
September 29, 1938
Munich Agreement. Germany, Italy, Great Britain, and France sign the Munich agreement, by which Czechoslovakia must surrender its border regions and defenses (the so-called Sudeten region) to Nazi Germany.
August 23, 1939
Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Agreement.
September 1, 1939
Germany invades Poland, starting World War II in Europe.
September 17, 1939
The Soviet Union occupies Poland from the east.
October 8, 1939
The Germans establish a ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland.
April 9, 1940
Germany invades Denmark and Norway.
May 10, 1940
Germany attacks western Europe (France and the Low Countries).
July 10, 1940
Battle of Britain begins.
April 6, 1941
Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.
June 22, 1941
Germany invades the Soviet Union.
July 6, 1941
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) shoot nearly 3,000 Jews at the Seventh Fort, one of the 19th-century fortifications surrounding Kovno.
August 3, 1941
Bishop Clemens August Graf von Galen of Muenster denounces the “euthanasia” killing program in a public sermon.
September 29-30, 1941
Einsatzgruppen shoot about 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar, outside Kiev.
November 7, 1941
Einsatzgruppen round up 13,000 Jews from the Minsk ghetto and kill them in nearby Tuchinki (Tuchinka).
November 30, 1941
Einsatzgruppen shoot 10,000 Jews from the Riga ghetto in the Rumbula Forest.
December 6, 1941
Soviet winter counteroffensive.
December 7, 1941:
Japan bombs Pearl Harbor and the United States declares war the next day.
December 8, 1941
The first killing operations begin at Chelmno in occupied Poland.
December 11, 1941
Nazi Germany declares war on the United States.
January 16, 1942
Germans begin the mass deportation of more than 65,000 Jews from Lodz to the Chelmno killing center.
January 20, 1942
Wannsee Conference held near Berlin, Germany.
March 27, 1942
Germans begin the deportation of more than 65,000 Jews from Drancy, outside Paris, to the east (primarily to Auschwitz).
June 28, 1942
Germany launches a new offensive towards the city of Stalingrad.
July 15, 1942
Germans begin mass deportations of nearly 100,000 Jews from the occupied Netherlands to the east (primarily to Auschwitz).
July 22, 1942
Germans begin the mass deportation of over 300,000 Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to the Treblinka killing center.
September 12, 1942
Germans complete the mass deportation of about 265,000 Jews from Warsaw to Treblinka.
November 23, 1942
Soviet troops counterattack at Stalingrad, trapping the German Sixth Army in the city.
April 19, 1943
Warsaw ghetto uprising begins.
