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hitler coming to power
On January 30, 1933, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor of Germany by German President Paul von Hindenburg. Hitler was the leader of the Nazi Party. The full name of the Nazi Party was the National Socialist German Workers’ Party. Its members were often called Nazis. The Nazis were radically right-wing, antisemitic, anticommunist, and antidemocratic. -
Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service
In April 1933, the Nazis enact their first national anti-Jewish law. This law is called “Law for the Restoration of the Professional Civil Service.” It allows the government to dismiss certain government workers, including Jews and political opponents. The Nazis claim that the law will make the government more reliable and efficient. In reality, this law is a purge. It is the Nazis’ first attempt to exclude Jews from German economic, social, and political life. -
The burning of the books
During the spring of 1933, Nazi university student organizations, professors, and librarians put together long lists of books they think are un-German. These lists include books written by Jewish authors. They also include books by non-Jewish authors whose ideas conflict with Nazi ideals. On the night of May 10, 1933, Nazis hold book burnings. They march by torchlight in nighttime parades, sing chants, and throw books into huge bonfires. On that night more than 25,000 books are burned. -
Nazi party becomes the state party
All political parties except the Nazi Party are dissolved. The Nazi Party is the only political party permitted in Germany, a situation that will last until the military defeat of Germany in 1945. Germany thus becomes a one-party dictatorship. Membership in the party increases to 2.5 million in 1935, and ultimately to 8.5 million by 1945. -
German forces invade Poland
German units, with more than 2,000 tanks and 1,000 planes, break through Polish defenses along the border and advance on Warsaw in a massive encirclement. Britain and France, standing by their guarantee of Poland's border, declare war on Germany on September 3, 1939. Warsaw surrenders to the Germans on September 28, 1939. The Polish army is defeated within weeks of the German invasion. -
Germany conquers Norway and Denmark
In a lightning attack, German forces attack Norway and Denmark. Denmark is occupied in one day. German forces land in Norway near Oslo, the capital, and in other places, securing the south. Germany also moves to secure the ports of Narvik and Trondheim in the north. British forces intervene, landing at Narvik, Namsos, and Andalsnes, but will be forced to withdraw by the first week of June 1940. Norway surrenders to Germany on June 10. -
forced labor
The Nazis subjected millions of people (both Jews and other victim groups) to forced labor under brutal conditions. From the establishment of the first Nazi concentration camps and detention facilities in the winter of 1933, forced labor—often pointless and humiliating, and imposed without proper equipment, clothing, nourishment, or rest—formed a core part of the concentration camp regimen. -
The gettos
During World War II, the SS and other German occupation authorities concentrated urban and sometimes regional Jewish populations in ghettos. Living conditions were miserable. Ghettos were often enclosed districts that isolated Jews by separating Jewish communities from the non-Jewish population and from other Jewish communities. The Germans established at least 1,143 ghettos in the occupied eastern territories. There were three types of ghettos: closed ghettos
open ghettos
destruction ghettos -
killing centers
in 1941, the SS concluded that the deportation of Jews to killing centers (to be gassed) was the most efficient way of achieving the "Final Solution." That same year, the Nazis opened the Chelmno camp in German-occupied Poland. Jews from the Lodz area of German-occupied Poland and Roma were killed there in mobile gas vans. -
The mas shootings in poland
after the invasion, German SS and police units began to carry out mass shootings of local Jews. At first, these units targeted Jewish men of military age. But by August 1941, they had started massacring entire Jewish communities, regardless of age or gender. This marked a radical escalation in Nazi anti-Jewish policy that ultimately culminated in the “Final Solution to the Jewish Question”—the Nazi plan to murder all of Europe’s Jews. -
killing of jews
To conceal the evidence of their annihilation of Europe's Jews, Germans and their collaborators destroy evidence of mass graves at the Belzec, Sobibor, and Treblinka killing centers, and at thousands of sites of mass shooting operations throughout German-occupied Poland, the German-occupied Soviet Union, and Serbia