holocausts time line

Nazi party is formed

Feb 20, 1920

Founded: February 20, 1920, Munich, Germany

Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany

Jan 30, 1933

Adolf Hitler appointed Chancellor of Germany

Dachau opens

Mar 22, 1933

Dachau concentration camp opens

boycott begins

Apr 1, 1933

Boycott of Jewish shops and businesses

Hitler becomes all powerful

Aug 2, 1934

Hitler proclaims himself Führer und Reichskanzler (Leader and Reich Chancellor). Armed forces must now swear allegiance to him

Nuremberg laws

Sep 15, 1935

"Nuremberg Laws": anti-Jewish racial laws enacted; Jews no longer considered German citizens; Jews could not marry Aryans; nor could they fly the German flag

Jews are defined

Oct 15, 1935

Germany defines a "Jew": anyone with three Jewish grandparents; someone with two Jewish grandparents who identifies as a Jew

Rome-berlin axis

Oct 25, 1936

Hitler and Mussolini form Rome-Berlin Axis

night of the broken glass

Nov 9, 1938

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)

invasion of Poland

Sep 1, 1939

Beginning of World War II: Germany invades Poland

Auschwitz opens

May 20, 1940

Concentration camp established at Auschwitz

pearl harbor attack

Dec 7, 1941

Japanese attack Pearl Harbor

United States Enters war

Dec 11, 1941

United States declares war on Japan and Germany

the final solution

Jun 1, 1943

Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in Poland and the Soviet Union

operation overlord

Jun 6, 1944

D-Day: Allied invasion at Normandy

the end of German aggression

May 8, 1945

V-E Day: Germany surrenders; end of Third Reich