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Schutzstaffel Organized
The Schutzstaffel was a major paramilitary organization under Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany, and later throughout German-occupied Europe during World War II. It began with a small guard unit known as the Saal-Schutz made up of NSDAP volunteers to provide security for party meetings in Munich. -
St. Louis Ship (with Jews)
During World War II, the Motorschiff St. Louis was a German ocean liner which carried more than 900 Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany in 1939 intending to escape anti-Semitic persecution. The refugees tried to disembark in Cuba but were denied permission to land. -
Hitler becomes Chancellor
Hitler's "rise" can be considered to have ended in March 1933, after the Reichstag adopted the Enabling Act of 1933 in that month. President Paul von Hindenburg had already appointed Hitler as Chancellor on 30 January 1933 after a series of parliamentary elections and associated backroom intrigues. -
Creation of the Zigeunerlager
The Gypsy family camp known as the Zigeunerlager, which existed for 17 months, was setup. This camp was setup to hold the gypsies. -
Hitler Claims Emergency Powers
The Enabling Act gave Hitler plenary powers and followed on the heels of the Reichstag Fire Decree, which had abolished most civil liberties and transferred state powers to the Reich government. The combined effect of the two laws was to transform Hitler's government into a legal dictatorship. -
Boycott of Jewish Businesses
The Nazi boycott of Jewish businesses in Germany began on April 1, 1933, and was claimed to be a defensive reaction to the Jewish boycott of German goods, which had been initiated but quickly abandoned in March 1933. -
Law for the Prevention of Hereditary Diseases
The German government passes the “Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Diseases” (Gesetz zur Verhütung erbkranken Nachwuchses), mandating the forced sterilization of certain individuals with physical and mental disabilities. -
Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals
The German government passes a “Law against Dangerous Habitual Criminals.” The new law allows courts to order the indefinite imprisonment of “habitual criminals” if they deem the person dangerous to society. It also provides for the castration of sex offenders. -
Nuremberg Laws
The Nuremberg Laws (German: Nürnberger Gesetze) were antisemitic and racist laws in Nazi Germany. They were enacted by the Reichstag on 15 September 1935, at a special meeting convened during the annual Nuremberg Rally of the Nazi Party (NSDAP). The two laws were the Law for the Protection of German Blood and German Honour, which forbade marriages and extramarital intercourse between Jews and Germans and the employment of German females under 45 in Jewish households, and the Reich Citizenshiplaw -
Reichs Zentrale is created
The company was established in Berlin on 15 May 1925 with a start capital of 100,000 Reichsmark as an umbrella organisation by nine regional broadcasters – that is to say, all of the German radio stations other than the Deutsche Stunde in Bayern – serving the various states of the Weimar Republic. -
Yellow Star for German Jews
The Jews of Europe were legally compelled to wear badges or distinguishing garments (e.g., pointed hats) at least as far back as the 13th century. This practice continued throughout the Middle Ages and Renaissance, but was largely phased out during the 17th and 18th centuries. With the coming of the French Revolution and the emancipation of western European Jews throughout the 19th century, the wearing of Jewish badges was abolished in Western Europe. -
Remilitarization of the Rhineland
The remilitarisation of the Rhineland (German: Rheinlandbesetzung) by the German Army began on 7 March 1936 when German military forces entered the Rhineland. This was significant because it violated the terms of the Treaty of Versailles and the Locarno Treaties, marking the first time since the end of World War I that German troops had been in this region. -
Germany invades Poland
DescriptionThe invasion of Poland, marked the beginning of World War II. The German invasion began on 1 September 1939, one week after the signing of the Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviet Union, and one day after the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union had approved the pact. -
Kristallnacht/The Night of Broken Glass
On November 9 to November 10, 1938, in an incident known as “Kristallnacht”, Nazis in Germany torched synagogues, vandalized Jewish homes, schools and businesses and killed close to 100 Jews. In the aftermath of Kristallnacht, also called the “Night of Broken Glass,” some 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and sent to Nazi concentration camps. -
Auschwitz opens
The concentration camp auschwitz was opened. This gave the germans more space to separate all the minorities -
Einsatzgruppen, starts
With the start of Hitler's “war of annihilation” against the Soviet Union in June 1941, the scale of Einsatzgruppen mass murder operations vastly increased. -
Babi Yar
Babi Yar is a ravine in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv and a site of massacres carried out by German forces during their campaign against the Soviet Union in World War II. The first, and best documented, of the massacres took place on 29–30 September 1941, killing approximately 33,771 Jews. -
Last Gassing at Auschwitz
The last inmates gassed in Auschwitz I, in December 1942, were 300–400 members of the Auschwitz II Sonderkommando, who had been forced to dig up and burn the remains of that camp's mass graves, thought to hold 100,000 corpses. -
Wannsee Conference
The Wannsee Conference was a meeting of senior government officials of Nazi Germany and Schutzstaffel leaders, held in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee on 20 January 1942. -
The Commisair Order
The Commissar Order (German: Kommissarbefehl) was an order issued by the German High Command (OKW) on 6 June 1941 before Operation Barbarossa. Its official name was Guidelines for the Treatment of Political Commissars (Richtlinien für die Behandlung politischer Kommissare). -
Lodz Ghetto Opens
The Łódź Ghetto or Litzmannstadt Ghetto (after the Nazi German name for Łódź) was a Nazi ghetto established by the German authorities for Polish Jews and Roma following the Invasion of Poland. -
Himmler Orders Liquidation of ghettos
On June 21, 1943, Heinrich Himmler issued an order to liquidate all ghettos and transfer remaining Jewish inhabitants to concentration camps. A few ghettos were re-designated as concentration camps and existed until 1944. -
Himmler Orders Destruction of Auschwitz
Himmler Orders Destruction of Auschwitz. Helps end the persecution of the jews by the germans -
Dr Josef Mengele arrives at Auschwitz
Josef Mengele. SS physician Josef Mengele conducted inhumane medical experiments on prisoners at Auschwitz. He was the most prominent of a group of Nazi doctors who conducted experiments that often caused great harm or death to the prisoners. -
Liberation of Auschwitz
January 2020 marks 75 years since the liberation of Auschwitz, the largest camp established by the Germans. A complex of camps, Auschwitz included a concentration camp, killing center, and forced-labor camps. It was located 37 miles west of Krakow (Cracow), near the prewar German-Polish border. -
Hitler 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 -
International Military Tribunal
November 20, 1945. The International Military Tribunal in Nuremberg, Germany, begins a trial of 21 (of 24 indicted) major Nazi German leaders on charges of crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit each of these crimes. -
Adolf Eichmann captured
Eichmann was captured by the Mossad in Argentina on 11 May 1960 and subsequently found guilty of war crimes in a widely publicised trial in Jerusalem, where he was executed by hanging in 1962. -
Madagascar Plan presented backfires
The Madagascar Plan was a proposal by the Nazi German government to forcibly relocate the Jewish population of Europe to the island of Madagascar. Franz Rademacher, head of the Jewish Department of the German Foreign Office, proposed the idea in June 1940, shortly before the Fall of France. The proposal called for the handing over of control of Madagascar, then a French colony, to Germany as part of the French surrender terms. -
Dr Josef Mengele Dies
Josef Mengele, the infamous Nazi doctor who performed medical experiments at the Auschwitz death camps, dies of a stroke while swimming in Brazil—although his death was not verified until 1985.