| January 1933 | |
Adolf Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany. |
| February 1933 | |
The Reichstag burns. |
| June 1934 | |
The bloody purge ordered by Hitler known as Nacht der langen Messer (The Night of the Long Knives) leaves hundreds dead, including Ernst Röhm, head of the SA. |
| August 1934 | |
William L. Shirer and his wife Tess arrive in Berlin. Shirer goes to work for an American news wire service. |
| September 1935 | |
The German government approves passage of the Nuremberg Laws. These laws codified who was Jewish in the new Nazi state and deprived those defined as Jews of their German citizenship. |
| March 1936 | |
German troops sweep into the Rhineland, in violation of the terms of the Treaty of Versailles written in 1919, a year after the end of the Great War. |
| March 1938 | |
The Anschluss: Austria is brought into the German Reich. Hitler arrives victoriously in Vienna. |
| September 1938 | |
The Munich Accord is approved. It gives Germany the right to annex the Sudetenland, the German-speaking parts of Czechoslovakia. |
| November 1938 | |
Synagogues are set ablaze across Germany and Austria in an outburst of government sanctioned violence against Jews called Kristallnacht. |
| March 1939 | |
German troops invade Czechoslovakia and occupy the capital city of Prague. |
| August 1939 | |
Germany and the Soviet Union approve a treaty of non-aggression between the two countries. |
| September 1939 | |
German troops invade Poland. Great Britain and France declare war on Germany. |
| May 1940 | |
Sweeping west, German troops invade the Low Countries. The Netherlands and Belgium surrender. |
| June 1940 | |
The German army reaches Paris. France surrenders and signs an armistice with Germany in the same rail car in Compiègne, France, where the Germans surrendered in 1918. |
| December 1940 | |
William L. Shirer leaves Berlin on a flight to Spain and then Portugal, where he boards a ship for the United States. |