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1933
March 22: The first official Nazi concentration camp opens in Dachau, a small village located near Munich (note: some "wild camps" already existed before 1933: Papenburg, Esterwegen, Börgermoor etc...). The first commandant of Dachau is Theodor Eicke. -
1933
April 26: The Gestapo ("Geheime Stat Polizei" - Secret State Police) is established by Herman Goering, minister of Prussia. -
1934
August 2: Hitler proclaims himself Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). Armed forces must now swear allegiance to him. -
1935
September 15: "Nuremberg Laws": first anti-Jewish racial laws enacted; Jews no longer considered German citizens; Jews could not marry Aryans; nor could they fly the German flag. -
1936
March 7: Germans march into the Rhineland, previously demilitarized by the Versailles Treaty. -
1937
July 15: Buchenwald concentration camp opens. -
1938
September 30: Munich Conference: Great Britain and France agree to German occupation of the Sudetenland, previously western Czechoslovakia. -
1938
November 9-10: Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass): anti-Jewish pogrom in Germany, Austria, and the Sudetenland; 200 synagogues destroyed; 7,500 Jewish shops looted; 30,000 male Jews sent to concentration camps (Dachau, Buchenwald, Sachsenhausen). -
1938
December 12: One billion mark fine levied against German Jews for the destruction of property during Kristallnacht -
1939
January 30: Hitler in Reichstag speech: if war erupts it will mean the Vernichtung (extermination) of European Jews -
1939
August 23: Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact signed: non-aggression pact between Soviet Union and Germany. -
1940
April 9: Germans occupy Denmark and southern Norway. -
1940
May 10: Germany invades the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, and France. -
1941
March: Adolf Eichmann appointed head of the department for Jewish affairs of the Reich Security Main Office, Section IV B 4 . -
1941
October: Establishment of Auschwitz II (Birkenau) for the extermination of Jews; Gypsies, Poles, Russians, and others were also murdered at the camp. -
1942
May: Extermination by gas begins in Sobibor killing center; by October 1943, 250,000 Jews murdered. -
1943
Summer: Armed resistance by Jews in Bedzin, Bialystok, Czestochowa, Lvov, and Tarnow ghettos -
1944
March 19: Germany occupies Hungary. -
1944
May 15: Nazis begin deporting Hungarian Jews; by June 27, 380,000 sent to Auschwitz. -
1945
April 30: Hitler commits suicide, liberation of Ravensbruck. -
1945
August 6: Bombing of Hiroshima
August 9: Bombing of Nagasaki -
1945
September 2: Japan surrenders; end of World War II