Chronology

This chronology seeks to outline the essential contours of some of the specific developments within the history of Nazi Germany, the Holocaust, and World War II. Given that the Holocaust played such a huge role in the affairs of nations and peoples, not all events, people, or places could be listed; doing so would, in one sense, make the chronology too unwieldy. Not only would this defeat the purpose of providing an accessible chronology; it would also lead to many of the events of the Holocaust becoming buried in the minutiae of other events.

1919	January 5: The German Workers’ Party (DAP) is founded by Anton Drexler and Karl Harrer. June 28: Germany signs the Versailles Treaty, formally ending World War I. September 12: Adolf Hitler joins the DAP.
1920	February 24: The Nazi Party is established when the DAP is renamed, and it becomes the National Socialist German Workers’ Party (NSDAP). Hitler presents a 25-point program, the Nazi Party Platform.
1922	October 24: Benito Mussolini and his Fascist Blackshirts March on Rome.
1923	November 9: Hitler leads an attempt to overthrow the government of Bavaria; he fails.
1924	February 24: Trial of Adolf Hitler for treason begins; he is found guilty and sentenced to five years in prison. April 1: Hitler commences his sentence at Landsberg Prison. December 19: Hitler is released from Landsberg, having served just eight months of his sentence.
1925	February 27: Hitler declares the Nazi Party (NSDAP) to be reestablished, with himself as leader (Führer). July 19: The first of two volumes of Hitler’s Mein Kampf are published.
1930	January 23: Wilhelm Frick becomes the first NSDAP member to become a minister in a state government.
1933	January 30: Adolf Hitler is appointed chancellor of Germany by President Paul von Hindenburg. February 27–28: The Reichstag fire happens. Arrests of the Nazis’ political opponents begin almost immediately. March 5: Reichstag elections occur. The Nazis gain 44 percent of the vote in manipulated elections. March 20: Dachau concentration camp is established. March 27: The Enabling Act is passed. April 1: Jewish businesses are boycotted across Germany. April 11: Nazis issue a decree defining who is a non-Aryan. April 21: Jewish ritual slaughter is banned. April 26: Hermann Göring establishes the Gestapo. May 10: Books written by Jews and “undesirables” are publicly burned. July 14: The Law for the Prevention of Offspring with Hereditary Defects is passed, forcing many Germans with “undesirable genes” to be sterilized. July 20: The Nazi government signs the Concordat with the Vatican. September 22: The Haavara Agreement is signed.
1934	January 26: Germany and Poland sign a nonaggression pact. June 30: Sturmabteilung (SA) leadership is purged, during what becomes known as the Night of the Long Knives. August 2: The German president, Paul von Hindenburg, dies. Hitler declares the office of president abolished and names himself Führer of Germany.
1935	September 15: The Nuremberg Laws are announced at the annual party rally. December 31: Jews holding civil service positions in Germany are dismissed.
1936	July 1: Hitler Youth membership becomes compulsory for all Aryan boys. August 1: The Summer Olympic Games begin in Berlin. October 25: The Rome-Berlin Axis is created.
1937	January 26: A new law is passed prohibiting Jews from working in any official capacity. March 21: Pope Pius XI issues the papal encyclical Mit Brennender Sorge. July 19: Buchenwald concentration camp is established.
1938	March 12: The Anschluss (union) of Austria with Germany is agreed. All German antisemitic decrees are applied immediately to Austria. July 6–14: An international conference on refugees is held at Evian, France. No action follows to alleviate the situation of Jews. August 1: The Nazi Office of Jewish Emigration is established to speed up the pace of Jewish emigration from Germany. August 8: Mauthausen concentration camp is established in Austria. August 11: Nazis destroy the Nuremberg synagogue. August 17: The Nazis require Jewish women to add “Sarah” and men to add “Israel” to their names on all legal documents. August 19: The Swiss government refuses entry to Austrian Jews seeking sanctuary. September 27: German Jews are banned from practicing law. September 29–30: The Munich Conference is held. Britain and France surrender the Sudetenland regions of Czechoslovakia to Germany by negotiation. October 5: Passports belonging to German Jews are marked with the letter J to indicate their identity. November 7: Ernst vom Rath, third secretary in the German Embassy in Paris, is shot and mortally wounded by Herschel Grynszpan. Vom Rath dies on November 9, precipitating Kristallnacht. November 9–10: The Kristallnacht pogrom occurs in Germany and Austria. Nazi figures give 91 Jews killed and up to 10,000 arrested, with 267 synagogues destroyed; figures are likely much higher. November 12: Retail businesses are forcibly transferred from Jewish owners. November 16: Jewish children are forbidden from attending German schools. December 2: Roma are required to be registered.
1939	January 1: Jews are banned from working with Germans under the Measure for the Elimination of Jews from the German Economy. March 15: Germany invades Czechoslovakia. March 28: Germany abrogates its nonaggression pact with Poland. May 15: The first prisoners arrive at Ravensbrück. June 17: The SS St. Louis, a ship carrying 936 Jewish passengers, returns to Europe after being denied entry into the United States and Cuba. August 23: The Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact is signed. September 1: Germany invades Poland; a curfew is imposed on German Jews. September 3: France and Britain declare war against Germany. September 17: The Soviet Union invades Poland. September 21: Reinhard Heydrich orders Einsatzgruppen commanders to establish ghettos in German-occupied Poland. September 27: Warsaw surrenders. Jewish Councils are established in Poland. Adam Czerniakow becomes president of the Jewish Council in Warsaw. October 8: A ghetto is established in Piotrkow Trybunalski, Poland. November 9: Łódź is annexed by Germany. November 23: Yellow stars are required to be worn by Polish Jews over the age of 10. November 30: The Soviet Union invades Finland. December 12: Labor camps are organized throughout Poland. Jews between the ages of 14 and 60 become forced laborers.
1940	February 8: Łódź ghetto is established. March 12: The Treaty of Moscow is signed, bringing an end to the war between the Soviet Union and Finland. April 1: Thousands of refugees are permitted into Shanghai, China. April 9: Denmark and southern Norway are invaded and occupied by Germany. Heinrich Himmler issues a directive to establish a concentration camp at Auschwitz. April 30: The Łódź ghetto is sealed off from the outside world. May 7: Nearly 165,000 inhabitants are sealed in the Łódź ghetto. May 10: France, the Netherlands, Belgium, and Luxembourg are invaded by Germany. May 20: Auschwitz concentration camp established for Polish political prisoners. June 4: Neuengamme concentration camp opens. June 10: Italy declares war against Britain and France. June 15: The Soviet Union occupies Latvia, Lithuania, and Estonia. June 22: France surrenders to Germany. Marshal Philippe Pétain leads the pro-Nazi state established at Vichy. June 27: Romania cedes the provinces of Bessarabia and Bukovina to the Soviet Union. July 17: The first anti-Jewish measures are taken in Vichy France. August 29: Hungary annexes Transylvania. September 7: German forces begin aerial bombings of Britain. September 27: The Tripartite Pact is signed by Germany, Italy, and Japan. October 3: Vichy France passes its own version of the Nuremberg Laws. October 7: Nazis invade Romania. October 16: Germans officially establish the Warsaw ghetto. November 4: Jewish civil servants in the Netherlands are dismissed. November 16: The Warsaw ghetto, containing nearly 500,000 Jews, is sealed. November 20–24: Hungary, Romania, and Slovakia join the Axis.
1941	January 2: The Iron Guard attempt a coup in Romania against government of Marshal Ion Antonescu. January 21–26: The Romanian Iron Guard annihilates hundreds of Jews. February 9: Dutch Nazis riot against Amsterdam Jews. March 1: Construction of Birkenau begins. April 6: Nazis invade Yugoslavia and Greece; Bulgaria annexes Thrace and Macedonia. April 21: Natzweiler-Struthof concentration camp opens in France. May 14: Thousands of Jews are rounded up in Paris at the Vel’ d’Hiv. June 22: Germany violates its nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union and invades (Operation Barbarossa); Hungary joins the Axis. June 27: Białystok is occupied by Nazis. The Białystok ghetto is established. July 2: Ukrainian nationalists murder thousands in Lvov (Lviv). July 17: Einsatzgruppen are ordered to execute captured communists and Jews during the Soviet campaign. July 20: The Minsk ghetto is established. July 31: Adolf Eichmann is appointed to prepare the Final Solution. September 1: The German euthanasia program is formally ended, following the deaths of some 100,000 people. September 6: The Vilna ghetto is established. September 19: Jews in Germany are ordered to wear yellow armbands bearing the Star of David. German troops occupy Kiev. September 29: The Einsatzgruppen murders some 34,000 Jews at Babi Yar ravine, outside Kiev. October 7: Birkenau is established as the primary mass-murder site of Auschwitz. October 22–24: Romanian and German forces massacre an estimated 50,000 Jews in Odessa. October 28: Approximately 9,000 Jews are killed outside of Kovno (Kaunas). November 8: Plans are made for the creation of a ghetto in Lvov (Lviv). November 24: Theresienstadt (Terezín) ghetto/concentration camp established. December 7: The Night and Fog directive begins in Germany. Japan attacks Pearl Harbor, drawing the United States into World War II. December 8: Chełmno extermination camp becomes fully operational; some 320,000 Jews will be murdered here. December 11: Germany and Italy declare war on the United States.
1942	January 20: The Wannsee Conference takes place. January 16: Deportations from Łódź begin. February 23: Some 768 Jewish passengers, after being refused entry into Palestine, drown when the SS Struma sinks off of the Turkish coast. March 1: Extermination by gas begins at Sobibór. March 17: Killings begin at Bełżec extermination camp; it will see the murder of 600,000 Jews by the time it closes. May 27: Reinhard Heydrich’s car is ambushed; he is seriously wounded in the attack and dies shortly thereafter. In response, German soldiers destroy the Czech village of Lidice, murdering most of its inhabitants and sending the rest to concentration camps. June 1: Jews in France, Holland, Belgium, Croatia, Slovakia, and Romania are ordered to wear yellow stars. June 1: Treblinka extermination camp begins operation. June 29–30: Following acts of armed resistance by Jewish partisans in the ghetto of Slonim, the Nazis set the ghetto on fire; they spend the next two weeks murdering between 7,000 and 10,000 Jews. July 14: Mass deportation of Dutch and Belgian Jews to Auschwitz begins. July 16: Over 4,000 children are taken from Paris and sent to Auschwitz; overall, some 12,887 Jews in Paris are sent through Drancy. July 22: Mass deportation of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka begins. July 23: Adam Czerniakow commits suicide in Warsaw. July 28: The Jewish Combat Organization is formed in the Warsaw ghetto. September 2–3: The Łachwa ghetto revolts, arguably the first ghetto revolt of the Holocaust. October 15: The SS slaughters 25,000 Jews near Brest-Litovsk. October 25: The deportation of Norwegian Jews begins. October 22: The SS put down a revolt at Sachsenhausen by a group of Jews about to be sent to Auschwitz. October 28: The first transport of Jews is sent from Theresienstadt (Terezín) to Auschwitz. November 19: The Soviet army begins its counteroffensive at Stalingrad, causing the German army to begin its retreat. December 24: The Jewish Combat Organization engages in armed operations against German troops in Kraków.
1943	January 18–21: Renewed deportations of Jews from the Warsaw ghetto begin following a visit from Himmler; Jewish resistance begins in the ghetto. January 22: Deportations from the Warsaw ghetto end, following the deaths of 50 Nazi soldiers. February 2: German forces surrender at Stalingrad. February 16: Theodor Eicke, head of the Inspectorate of Concentration Camps, dies when his aircraft is shot down. February 26: The first Roma arrive at Auschwitz. February 27: The last Jews in Berlin are rounded up and deported through Fabrikaktion (Factory Action). February 27–March 6: Non-Jewish wives and mothers undertake the Rosenstrasse protest in Berlin against the imprisonment of their Jewish husbands and children. March 13–14: The Kraków ghetto is liquidated. March 23: Nazi deportation of Greek Jews begins. April 5: Approximately 4,000 Jews are massacred in the Ponary Forest, outside Vilna. April 13: Mass graves are discovered in Katyn, Poland. April 19: New deportations from the Warsaw ghetto start, and the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising begins. May 8: Nazi forces capture the Jewish Combat Organization’s command bunker at Miła 18. May 16: SS General Jürgen Stroop reports that the “Jewish quarter of Warsaw is no more.” May 19: Nazis declare Berlin to be Judenfrei (cleansed of Jews). June 2: Following resistance in Lvov (Lviv), 3,000 Jews are killed; another 7,000 are sent to the concentration camp at Janowska. June 11: Himmler orders the liquidation of all ghettos in occupied Poland. June 25–26: The Częstochowa ghetto revolts. July 25: Mussolini’s Fascist regime falls in Italy, and Mussolini is dismissed by King Victor Emmanuel III. August 2: The Treblinka Uprising happens. August 15–16: The uprising of the Białystok ghetto occurs. August 23: Wilhelm Frick is named Reichsprotektor of Bohemia and Moravia. September 3: The Allies invade southern Italy. September 8: Italy surrenders to the Allies and declares war against Germany; German forces enter northern Italy in response. October 1–2: German police begin deportations of Danish Jews; Danes respond with a rescue effort that saves the lives of 90 percent of the Jewish population. October 14: The Sobibór Uprising occurs. October 16: Nazis undertake a major raid and razzia (roundup) against the Jews of Rome, who are sent to Auschwitz October 21: The Minsk ghetto is liquidated. October 30: The Moscow Declaration is signed.
1944	January 22: U.S. president Franklin D. Roosevelt creates the War Refugee Board March 19: Germany begins its occupation of Hungary; Adolf Eichmann is sent from Berlin to oversee the deportation of the Hungarian Jews. May 15: The deportation of Jews from Hungary to Auschwitz begins; Jews from Ruthenia and Transylvania are deported. May 16: Germans offer to free 1,00,000 Jews in exchange for 10,000 trucks. June 23: The Swedish International Red Cross is allowed to visit Theresienstadt (Terezín). June 30: The Kasztner Train departs from Budapest. July 9: Raoul Wallenberg arrives in Hungary, where he distributes Swedish passports and sets up safe houses for Jews. July 11: Deportations from Hungary are halted by order of Regent Miklós Horthy. July 20: German officers fail to assassinate Hitler in the bomb plot. July 24: Majdanek extermination camp is liberated by the Russians. August 1–October 4: The Warsaw Revolt occurs. August 2: Germany destroys the so-called Gypsy camp at Auschwitz, gassing some 3,000 in the process. August 6: Łódź, the last Jewish ghetto in Poland, is liquidated; 60,000 Jews are sent to Auschwitz. August 23: Romanian dictator Ion Antonescu is deposed and turned over to Soviet forces. August 25: Paris is liberated. October 7: The Sonderkommando revolt at Auschwitz; one of the gas chambers is destroyed, and 15 SS guards and 400 members of the Sonderkommando are killed. November 8: Deportations resume in Budapest. November 19: The Vatican and four other neutral powers in Budapest issue a collective protest to the Hungarian government calling for the suspension of Jewish deportations. November 28: Himmler orders the gas chambers at Auschwitz destroyed. December 24–29: Hungarian Arrow Cross fascists attack Jews in Budapest.
1945	January 17: Raoul Wallenberg is arrested by Soviet forces for espionage. January 18: The evacuation of Auschwitz begins. January 19: The Soviet Army liberates Łódź. January 28: Soviet forces liberate Auschwitz. April 9: The evacuation of Mauthausen begins. April 11: American forces liberate Buchenwald. April 12: U.S. president Franklin Delano Roosevelt dies and is succeeded by Harry S. Truman. April 13: Soviets liberate Vienna. April 15: British forces liberate Bergen-Belsen. April 27: Soviet forces liberate Sachsenhausen. April 28: Benito Mussolini is assassinated. April 29: American forces liberate Dachau; Soviet forces liberate Ravensbrück. April 30: Hitler commits suicide. May 1: Joseph Goebbels kills his wife and children before shooting himself as Berlin is surrounded by the Soviet army. May 2: Soviet forces capture Berlin. May 3: Theresienstadt (Terezín) is surrendered to the International Committee of the Red Cross. May 5: American forces liberate Mauthausen. May 7: Germany surrenders to the Allies in Reims. May 9: Wilhelm Keitel signs surrender documents in Berlin. May 23: Heinrich Himmler commits suicide. July 23: Marshal Philippe Pétain is tried for treason by France’s High Court of Justice. August 8: The London Charter Agreement is signed. September 1: Japan surrenders to the Allies after the United States detonates atomic bombs at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, ending World War II. October 15: Pierre Laval is hanged in France. October 18: The International Military Tribunal of major war criminals begins at Nuremberg. October 24: Vidkun Quisling is executed in Norway, after being found guilty of high treason.
1946	June 1: Ion Antonescu is executed in Bucharest following a guilty verdict at his May trial. July 4: Forty-two Jews are killed in a pogrom in Kielce, Poland. October 1: The International Military Tribunal ends. October 15: Hermann Göring commits suicide in his cell at Nuremberg. October 16: Death sentences are carried out at Nuremberg; those condemned are hanged.