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Hitler Appointed Chancellor
The Act allowed Hitler and his Cabinet to rule by emergency decree for four years, though Hindenburg remained President. Hitler immediately set about abolishing the powers of the states and the existence of non-Nazi political parties and organizations. Non-Nazi parties were formally outlawed on 14 July 1933, and the Reichstag abdicated its democratic responsibilities. Hindenburg remained commander-in-chief of the military and retained the power to negotiate foreign treaties. -
First Concentration Camp
Between 1933 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its allies established more than 44,000 camps and other incarceration sites (including ghettos). The perpetrators used these locations for a range of purposes. These purposes included forced labor, detention of people deemed to be "enemies of the state," and mass murder. Millions of people suffered and died or were killed. Among these sites was Dachau, the longest operating camp. -
The Enabling Act
The Enabling Act allowed the Reich government to issue laws without the consent of Germany's parliament, laying the foundation for the complete Nazification of German society. The law was passed on March 23, 1933, and published the following day. -
National Boycott
On April 1, 1933, the Nazis carried out the first nationwide, planned action against Jews: a boycott targeting Jewish businesses and professionals. The boycott was both a reprisal and an act of revenge against Greuel propaganda that German and foreign Jews, assisted by foreign journalists, were allegedly circulating in the international press to damage Nazi Germany's reputation. -
New Law Passed
Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service removes Jews from government positions. -
Book Burning
On May 10, 1933, university students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books. The works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames alongside blacklisted American authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller, while students gave the Nazi salute. -
Reich Chancellor
On May 10, 1933, university students in 34 university towns across Germany burned over 25,000 books. The works of Jewish authors like Albert Einstein and Sigmund Freud went up in flames alongside blacklisted American authors such as Ernest Hemingway and Helen Keller, while students gave the Nazi salute. -
Austria is annexed to Germany
German troops entered Austria on March 12, 1938. The annexation of Austria to Germany was proclaimed on March 13, 1938. In this German newsreel footage, Austrians express overwhelming enthusiasm for the Nazi takeover of their country. -
Munich Agreement
The Munich Agreement was an agreement reached in Munich on 30 September 1938, by Nazi Germany, the United Kingdom, the French Republic, and Fascist Italy. The agreement provided for the German annexation of part of Czechoslovakia called the Sudetenland, where more than three million people, mainly ethnic Germans, lived. The pact is also known in some areas as the Munich Betrayal, because of a previous 1924 alliance agreement and a 1925 military pact between France and the Czechoslovak Republic -
Czechoslovakia is Captured
German troops marched into Czechoslovakia. They took over Bohemia, and established a protectorate over Slovakia. Hitler's invasion of Czechoslovakia was the end of appeasement for several reasons: it proved that Hitler had been lying at Munich. -
Germany Invades Poland
Long before Adolf Hitler took power in January 1933, he articulated his violent, racially based worldview in his book Mein Kampf. Germany should have won World War I, he argued, but it had been stabbed in the back by Jews and communists and reduced still further by the hated Treaty of Versailles. Only with Lebensraum, or “living space,” could Germans fulfill their destiny as the “master race.” For him, Germany’s future lay in territorial expansion. -
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WW2
World War II began in Europe on September 1, 1939, when Germany invaded Poland. Great Britain and France responded by declaring war on Germany on September 3. The war between the U.S.S.R. and Germany began on June 22, 1941, with Operation Barbarossa, the German invasion of the Soviet Union. -
Invasion of Denmark and Normandy
Under the code name 'Operation Weserübung', Nazi Germany attacked Denmark and Norway on 9 April 1940. On that same day, Denmark surrendered and was occupied. -
Blitzkrieg invasion
Germany invaded the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. Luxembourg was occupied that same day. The Netherlands surrendered on 15 May, Belgium on the 28th. At first, Great Britain supported the Netherlands, Belgium, and France, but it withdrew later. -
Operation Barbarossa
Operation Barbarossa was the invasion of the Soviet Union by Nazi Germany and many of its Axis allies, starting on Sunday, 22 June 1941, during World War II. It was the largest and costliest land offensive in human history, with around 10 million combatants taking part, and over 8 million casualties by the end of the operation. -
Pearl Harbor
The attack on Pearl Harbor was a surprise military strike by the Empire of Japan on the United States Pacific Fleet at its naval base at Pearl Harbor on Oahu, Hawaii, on December 7, 1941. At the time, the U.S. was a neutral country in World War II. The air raid on Pearl Harbor, which was launched from aircraft carriers, resulted in the U.S. entering the war on the side of the Allies on the day following the attack. -
Wannsee Conference
The purpose of the conference, called by the director of the Reich Security Main Office SS-Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, was to ensure the co-operation of administrative leaders of various government departments in the implementation of the Final Solution to the Jewish Question, whereby most of the Jews of German-occupied Europe would be deported to occupied Poland and murdered -
Battle of Stalingrad
The Battle of Stalingrad was a major battle on the Eastern Front of World War II, beginning when Nazi Germany and its Axis allies attacked. The battle was characterized by fierce close-quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians in aerial raids; the battle epitomized urban warfare, being the single largest and costliest urban battle in military history. It was the bloodiest and fiercest battle of the entirety of World War II—and arguably in all of human history -
D-Day
The Normandy landings were the landing operations and associated airborne operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during the Second World War. Codenamed Operation Neptune and often referred to as D-Day (after the military term), it is the largest seaborne invasion in history. The operation began the liberation of France, and the rest of Western Europe, and laid the foundations of the Allied victory on the Western Front. -
Suicide
Adolf Hitler, chancellor and dictator of Nazi Germany from 1933 to 1945, committed suicide via a gunshot to the head on 30 April 1945 in the Führerbunker in Berlin[a] after it became clear that Germany would lose the Battle of Berlin, which led to the end of World War II in Europe. Eva Braun, his wife of one day, also committed suicide by cyanide poisoning.