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Hitler Appointed Chancellor
Following the appointment of Adolf Hitler as German chancellor on the Nazi state -
Reichstag Fire Decree
The Reichstag (German parliament) building burns in Berlin. Hitler used the event to convince President Hindenburg to declare a state of emergency, suspending important constitutional safeguards. Germany -
German Invasion Of Poland
Germany invades Poland, initiating World War II in Europe. German forces broke through Polish defenses along the border and quickly advanced on Warsaw, the Polish capital. -
Auschwitz Camp Established
The Auschwitz concentration camp complex was the largest of its kind established by the Nazi regime. It included three main camps, all of which deployed incarcerated prisoners at forced labor. One of them also functioned for an extended period as a killing center. The camps were located approximately 37 miles west of Krakow, near the prewar German-Polish border in Upper Silesia, an area that Nazi Germany annexed in 1939 after invading and conquering Poland. -
Assassination of Reinhard Heydrich
Heydrich was the chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) in Berlin—the SS and police agency most directly concerned with implementing the Holocaust during World War II. While still chief of the RSHA, Heydrich also served as Acting Reich Protector of German-occupied Bohemia and Moravia -
Death Penalty for Aiding Jews
Jews in hiding and their protectors risked severe punishment if captured. In much of German-occupied eastern Europe, such activities were deemed capital offenses. This September 1942 German poster, issued during mass deportations to the Treblinka killing center, threatens death to anyone aiding Jews who fled the Warsaw ghetto. -
Raphael Lemkin Dies
Raphael Lemkin coined the word "genocide" in his 1944 book, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe. He tirelessly lobbied the United Nations for genocide to be added to international law, and his efforts to enlist the support of national delegations and influential leaders eventually paid off. On December 9, 1948, the United Nations approved the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide. Lemkin did not rest with the UN document, but committed the rest of his life. -
Adolf Eichmann Found Guilty
The charges against Eichmann were numerous. After the Wannsee Conference (January 1942), Eichmann coordinated deportations of Jews from Germany and elsewhere in western, southern, and northern Europe to killing centers (through his representatives Alois Brunner, Theodor Dannecker, Rolf Guenther, and Dieter Wisliceny and others in the Gestapo).