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Hilter is Appointed
On this day, President Paul von Hindenburg appointed Hitlerv as Chancellor. -
Munich Agreement
The Munich Agreement was a settlement permitting Nazi Germany's annexation of portions of Czechoslovakia along the country's borders mainly inhabited by German speakers, for which a new territorial designation "Sudetenland" was coined. -
Nazi-Soviet Nonaggresion Agreement
A treaty made by Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939 that opened the way for both nations to invade Poland. -
Germany invades Poland, starting World War II in Europe.
The German invasion of Poland was a primer on how Hitler intended to wage war--what would become the "blitzkrieg" strategy. This was characterized by extensive bombing early on to destroy the enemy's air capacity, railroads, communication lines, and munitions dumps, followed by a massive land invasion with overwhelming numbers of troops, tanks, and artillery. Once the German forces had plowed their way through, devastating a swath of territory, infantry moved in, picking off any remaining resist -
Germans establish a ghetto in Piotrków Trybunalski, Poland.
Piotrkow Trybunalski is a town in central Poland about 26 kilometres south of Lodz, it is one of Poland’s oldest cities.
Piotrkow was part of Russia between 1815 until 1915, before reverting back to Poland in 1919, it was an important industrial centre, principally for the manufacture of textiles, wood and glass products. -
Einsatzgruppen (mobile killing units) shoot nearly 3,000 Jews at the Seventh Fort, one of the 19th-century fortifications surrounding Kovno.
Einsatzgruppen were Schutzstaffel (SS) paramilitary death squads of Nazi Germany that were responsible for mass killings, primarily by shooting, during World War II. -
Nazi Germany declares war on the United States.
The bombing of Pearl Harbor surprised even Germany. Although Hitler had made an oral agreement with his Axis partner Japan that Germany would join a war against the United States, he was uncertain as to how the war would be engaged. Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor answered that question. On December 8, Japanese Ambassador Oshima went to German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to nail the Germans down on a formal declaration of war against America -
Germans begin the deportation of more than 65,000 Jews from Drancy, outside Paris, to the east (primarily to Auschwitz).
In 1939, before the Nazis invaded France, the French government had opened camps (like Gurs or Noe) designed to receive the Spanish refugees escaping from the fascist regime of Franco. These camps were guarded by the French police and in the summer 1940, all refugees were handed over the Nazis. They were quickly transferred to various concentration camps in Germany and very few of them survived. -
Allied forces land in southern France.
Eisenhower argued for taking Marseilles for the fact that the Germans had already sent a portion of the area's defenses northward to reinforce the Normandy region, leaving Marseilles vulnerable and free of the threat of German demolition. The elimination of German forces in southern France in general would give the Normandy landers much needed relief on their southern flank, granting much safety for a strong supply line. -
Soviet troops liberate the Auschwitz camp complex.
In mid-January 1945, as Soviet forces approached the Auschwitz concentration camp complex, the SS began evacuating Auschwitz and its subcamps. SS units forced nearly 60,000 prisoners to march west from the Auschwitz camp system. Thousands had been killed in the camps in the days before these death marches began. -
Hilter Commits Suicide
On this day in 1945, holed up in a bunker under his headquarters in Berlin, Adolf Hitler commits suicide by swallowing a cyanide capsule and shooting himself in the head. Soon after, Germany unconditionally surrendered to the Allied forces, ending Hitler's dreams of a "1,000-year" Reich. -
Germany Surrenders
This instrument of surrender was signed on May 9, 1945, at Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower's headquarters in Reims by Gen. Alfred Jodl, Chief of Staff of the German Army.
