Chronology Of Events

Hitler’s War and Holocaust

Chronology of Events The European Perspective ‘

When you go home. Tell them of us and say ‘For your tomorrow, we gave our today’

Chronology of Events (Inscription on the 2nd Division Memorial at Kohima)

The world has never seen a conflict so devastating as the Second World War.

Some sixty million men, women and children perished

simply because of human failings. These pages focus on the European stage where conflict engulfed virtually the whole continent. Where mans misplaced hatred led to unimaginable horrors of war and genocide. Where one man’s dream lay another man’s nightmare. Where reason and logic where discarded like trash on the rubbish heap. Were pity and understanding turned to apathy. This chronology is designed to give an accurate time line to events that shaped the twentieth century. It is also designed so that we can learn from the past so that such events can ever happen again. The Holocaust: The Holocaust was Nazi Germany’s attempt to eliminate, once and for all, all so called enemies of the Reich. These included Jews; Gypsies, Homosexuals, Political prisoners, anti-socials, in fact anyone Hitler or his disciples disliked, regardless of age or sex. In Hebrew, the Holocaust is called ‘Shoah’ which in itself means – a great and terrible wind. The word Holocaust comes from the Greek, ‘Holos’ which means ‘whole’ and ‘Caustos’ which simply means ‘burnt’. Originally it meant consumed by fire. Anti-Semitism

The European Perspective

The word anti-Semitism was invented in 1879 by a German racist by the name Wilhelm Marr (1818-1904). But anti-Semitism as a phenomenon was many centuries older. Its roots lay in religion. Below are just some comments from the Catholic Church which was directed against Jews.

1

“Murderers of the Lord”

2

“Rebels and detesters of God”

3

“Companions of the devil”

4

“No better than hogs in their lewd grossness and gluttony”

An Estimated Holocaust Death Toll Jews

6 million plus

Soviet Prisoners of War

3 million plus

Soviet Civilians

2 million plus

Polish Civilians

1 million plus

Yugoslav Civilians

1 million plus

Gypsies

200,000 plus

Physical and Mentally Handicapped

70,000 plus

Exact figures are not known but the above estimates give a good scale of suffering. Many thousands more died at the hands of the Nazis, such as Political prisoners, homosexuals, resistance fighters.

‘The Russian is no more than an animal; he has no right to exist other than in the service of Germany.’ Adolf Hitler. August 1941

‘that in this camp they also locked up children, and I feel the Americans were right to make us see it, and this is still my point today when people doubt the figure of five or six million (Jews) dead or try and make a comparison with the number of German soldiers who died in the war; or who say that two million Germans died after capitulation in May 1945, my only reply can be that if it was only eight children that I saw there it was the greatest shame of all time’ Wolf Sendele, SS member who had joined in 1932 and was dismissed from the organisation in 1934 after he tried to expose corruption in his unit. The above statement from Sendele was after he was forced by the Americans to help clear the mess that was Mauthausen concentration camp after the war.

Chronology of Events The European Perspective

1868 23 March 1868

Johann Dietrich Eckart Is Born in Neumarkt, Bavaria, Germany. Eckart becomes one of the founding members of the German Workers Party (DAP). The Party that Hitler would transform into the NSDAP. He and Hitler become very close friends.

1871 21 March 1871

Germany under Bismarck is unified.

1885

07 January 1885

Alois Hitler and Klara Polzl are married at six o’clock in the morning. Alois went straight to work after the ceremony.

May 1885

Gustav Hitler is born (Adolf’s older brother) but dies in 1887 of diphtheria (a contagious disease Producing fever and difficulty in breathing and swallowing)

1886 September 1886

Ida Hitler is born (Adolf’s older sister) but dies in 1888 of diphtheria.

1887 1887

Otto Hitler is born (Adolf’s older brother) but dies a few days later.

1889 20 April 1889

At 1830 hours, Klara Hitler gives birth her fourth child Adolf in her home in the Gasthof Zum Pommer, Vorstadt nr.219 in Braunau am Inn on the Austrio-German border.

1893 12 January 1893

Hermann Goring is born in Rosenheim, Bavaria.

12 January 1893

Alfred Rosenberg was born in Tallinn, Russia (now Estonia)

1894 1894

Adolf Hitler’s younger brother Edmund is born but dies some time in 1900.

26 April 1894

Rudolf Hess is born in Alexandria, Egypt. The son of a wholesaler and exporter whom did not live in Germany until he was fourteen.

1895 01 May 1895

Adolf Hitler attends the primary school at Fischlam in Linz.

June 1895

Alois Hitler (Hitler’s father) retires after 40 years in the service of the Austrian state. He now spends his leisure time bee keeping.

1896 1896

Adolf Hitler’s younger sister Paula is born and lives until 1960.

1897

29 October 1897

Joseph Goebbels is born into a strict working class family from Rheydt in the Rhineland.

1900 May 1900

Karl Wolf is born in Darmstadt. Wolf would one day become Heinrich Himmler’s personal adjutant and eventually be appointed his liaison in the Fuhrers headquarters.

17 September 1900

Adolf Hitler starts his secondary school education.

07 October 1900

Heinrich Himmler is born in Munich. The son of a pious Roman Catholic schoolmaster, who had once been the tutor to the Bavarian crown prince whom Heinrich was named and who agreed to be young Heinrich’s Godfather.

1903 03 January 1903

Alois Hitler, whilst sipping over his usual morning glass of wine collapses and dies in the Gasthaus Wiesinger.

1904 07 March 1904

Reinhard Eugen Tristan Heydrich is born in Haille near Leipzig. His father, Bruno was a Wagnerian operatic singer and was the founder and director of the Halle Conservatory of Music whilst his mother was an accomplished pianist. Reinhard would grow up to have the infamous title ‘Hangman of Europe’ as one of Himmler’s closest lieutenants.

1905 19 March 1905

Albert Speer is born at Mannheim, Germany. Speer would become Hitler’s favourite architect.

Autumn 1905

Adolf Hitler leaves high school.

1906 19 March 1906

Adolf Karl Eichmann is born Solingen in Germany. Eichmann would be labelled ‘Desk murder’

for his role in Hitler’s genocidal war against the Jews of Europe.

1907 Early January 1907

Adolf Hitler moves to Vienna with the view to try his luck by gaining access to the Academy of Fine Arts, leaving his mother in poor health with breast cancer.

October 1907

Adolf Hitler is told that he has failed the two tough three hour examinations which he needed to pass to gain access into the Academy of Fine Arts. He requests the reasons for his failure and is subsequently told that his real talents may lie in architecture.

October 1907

Adolf Hitler is notified that his mother is dying, he decides to move back home and care for his mother.

21 December 1907

Klara Hitler (Adolf’s mother) dies of breast cancer aged 47 years old and Adolf is devastated.

1908 February 1908

Hitler returns to Vienna from Linz.

October 1908

Hitler is told by the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna that he will not be allowed to re-sit the entrance examination to become a pupil at the academy. He is devastated and this failure it is believed turns him into an angry and frustrated young man.

18 November 1908

Hitler is now residing at room 16 of Felberstrabe 22, close to Westbahnhof in Vienna. He will remain at this address for about nine months.

1909 Mid August 1909

Because of financial restraints, Hitler leaves his address at Felberstrabe and moves to cheaper accommodation in nearby Sechshauserstrabe 58.

16 September 1909

Hitler moves out of his address at Sechshauserstrabe 58. It is now believed that he is living on the streets of Vienna as down-and-out.

09 December 1909

At rock bottom, Hitler, thin and with his bedraggled clothes moves into a doss-house for the homeless (Asyl fur obdachlose) in Meidling. During the day, Hitler along with other residents have to vacate the premises.

1910 09 February 1910

Hitler’s luck changes for the better as his financial situation improves and he seeks better accommodation in a Men’s Home. Here unlike life in the doss-house, he has a little privacy as his bed space is within a little cubicle and for a small sum of 50 Heller. He now can retain his little cubicle on a more indefinite basis. The Men’s Home has a lot more luxuries than he had at the doss-house. Here Hitler along with his friend and business associate, Reinhold Hanisch, would make money from selling picture postcard size paintings of Vienna, Hitler being the artist and Hanisch being the seller. Hitler also worked closely with a Jew by the name Josef Neumann and it seems that he was on friendly terms with him.

1911 Autumn 1911

Adolf Hitler fails to register for military service in Austria.

1912 06 February 1912

Eva Anna Paula Braun is born in Munich Germany.

1913 20 April 1913

On his 24th birthday, Adolf Hitler is now entitled to inherit his share of his father’s inheritance.

16 May 1913

The district court in Linz confirms Adolf Hitler’s share of his father’s inheritance. The sum is 652 Kronen, but with the added interest Hitler receives 819 Kronen and 98 Heller.

24/25 May 1913

Hitler with a small suitcase containing all his worldly possessions, and accompanied by Rudolf Hausler, a short-sighted, unemployed shop-assistant, sets off for Munich. They rent a small

room together on the 3rd floor of 34 Schleibheimerstube, in the north of the city from a tailor by name Joseph Popp. Mid May 1913

Hitler’s room-mate, Rudolf Hausler moves out of their shared room. After a few days Hausler rents the room next door to Hitler.

August 1913

The Austrian police in Linz start making enquiries about the whereabouts of Adolf Hitler. They are looking for him because of his non-registration for military service.

1914 18 January 1914

A Munich police officer arrives with a summons for Hitler at his Schleibheimerstube address. The summons orders him to present himself to the Linz police in Austria or face a fine or imprisonment. The reason for the summons was for his non-registration for military service.

19 January 1914

Hitler sends a telegram to the Austrian Consulate requesting more time to present himself for military registration. He asked that the 5th February 1914 be considered for him. This request is turned down by the Linz Magistrate. In response he writes a three and a half page letter claiming full responsibility for not registering in time, but he states that he had indeed did register, but late and then never heard anything else from them. The Consular officials after considering his letter decide to allow him the extra time he requested by naming the 5th February 1914 as the new dead-line, but instead of having to appear in Linz he now has to appear in Salzburg.

05 February 1914

Hitler registers for military service in Salzburg, however after examination he is found to be too weak to undertake military service and is sent home.

28 June 1914

Assassination of the Austrian heir Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophie the Duchess of Hohenberg, at Sarajevo. Gavrilo Princip shot them during a visit to the Bosnian capital. Princip was a Serb student belong to the Serbian terrorist group, the Black Hand.

June 1914

The Secretary of the Austrian delegation in Belgrade suggests Serb government complicity in Sarajevo. Anti-Serb riots break out in Vienna, Brunn and Sarajevo and throughout Bosnia.

02 July 1914

German ambassador assures count Berchtold and Emperor Francis Joseph that Berlin would Support any action that Austria would take against Serbia.

04 July 1914

Archduke Ferdinand is laid to rest at Artstetten family Schloss, some 50 miles west of Vienna.

08 July 1914

The German ambassador in Vienna pushes count Berchtold to take energetic action against Serbia, preferably before Serbia’s ally Russia can intervene.

23 July 1914

The Austrians issue a 48 hour ultimatum to Serbia.

26 July 1914

Austria mobilises 8 Corps on the Russian frontier.

28 July 1914

At noon, Austria-Hungary declares war on Serbia.

29 July 1914

The Russian Czar orders partial mobilisation.

30 July 1914

The Czar of Russia orders full mobilisation.

31 July 1914

Turkey orders mobilisation for the 3rd of August. All men 20-45 years old are to be called up.

01 August 1914

Germany declares war on Russia.

03 August 1914

Germany declares war on France.

04 August 1914

Germany declares war on Belgium and automatically invades her. Britain, allied to Belgium, declares war on Germany.

05 August 1914

Hitler volunteers for military service, not with his own country’s army but with the First Bavarian Infantry Regiment. After registering, they send him home.

Aug-Nov 1914

The First campaigns in East Africa begin.

7-16 August 1914

The British Expeditionary Force (BEF) land in France.

16 August 1914

Adolf Hitler is summoned to report for military service at the recruiting Depot VI in Munich. He is kitted out for the 2nd reserve Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment. According to his own account in Mein Kampf he had written a letter of petition to King Ludwig II of Bavaria requesting the honour to serve in a Bavarian regiment which he claimed to receive a reply the next day allowing his enlistment. It is more likely that the recruiting teams overlooked Hitler’s nationality on the grounds that they were swamped with potential recruits.

20 August 1914

On the Eastern Front, the Battle of Gumbinnen is fought.

23 August 1914

Battle of Mons.

24 August 1914

The main German forces invade France.

26-30 August 1914

In the East, the Battle of Tannenburg rages.

5-10 September 1914

First Battle of Marne rages.

Early September 1914

Hitler is sent to the newly formed Bavarian Reserve Infantry Regiment 16 (Known after its first commander as the ‘List Regiment’) for basic training.

20 October 1914

Hitler completes his basic training and is send with his regiment to Flanders on the Western Front.

29 October 1914

Hitler’s battalion gets its first taste of action on the Menin Road near Ypres. In a letter to a friend. He states that his regiment has been reduced to just 611 men from a total of 3,600.

6-15 September 1914

Battle of Masurian Lakes rages.

8-12 September 1914

Battle of Lemberg rages on the Balkan Front.

15 September 1914

The first trenches of the war are dug.

?? October 1914

The Allies capture German Southwest Africa.

12 Oct – 11 Nov 1914

The first Battle of Ypres rages.

01 November 1914

At sea, the Battle of Coronel is fought.

02 November 1914

Russia declares war on Turkey.

03 November 1914

Hitler is promoted to corporal and it is backdated to the 1st November 1914.

06 November 1914

Britain and France declare war on Turkey.

09 November 1914

Hitler is assigned to the regimental staff as an orderly (Ordonnanz). His job is now that of a

`

dispatch runner (Meldeganger), carrying orders from command post to command post.

11 Nov-early Dec 1914

The Germans push the Russians further east.

02 December 1914

Austrio-Hungarian troops capture Belgrade.

02 December 1914

Hitler is awarded the Iron Cross 2nd Class.

08 December 1914

At sea, the Battle of the Falkland Islands takes place.

11 December 1914

The Serbs recapture Belgrade.

22 Dec-18 Jan 1914

The Russians repulse Turkish attacks in the Caucasus.

1915 03 January 1915

The Germans use poison gas for the first time on the Eastern Front.

24 January 1915

The Dogger Bank is fought at sea.

08 February 1915

The winter Battle of Masuria begins in the east.

Feb-Sept 1915

First period of intensive German submarine warfare begins.

10-13 March 1915

On the Western Front, the Battle of Neuve Chapelle rages.

March 1915

Hitler’s regiment sees combat in the trenches near Fromelles, on the Western Front.

18 March 1915

The Allies attempt a naval attack on the Dardanelles.

22 Apr-27 May 1915

The second Battle of Ypres rages.

25 Apr- 09 Jan 1915

Allied landings at Gallipoli begins.

26 April 1915

Italy and the Allies agree to the Treaty of London.

02-04 May 1915

Battle of Gorlice-Tarnow is fought in the east.

04 May 1915

The second Battle of Artois begins.

09-10 May 1915

Battle of Aubers Ridge.

15-23 May 1915

Battle of Festubert begins.

23 May 1915

Italy declares war on the Austro-Hungarian empire.

?? June 1915-Jan 1916

Main Allied campaigns begin in Cameroon, Africa.

23 June 1915

On the Italian Front, the Battle of Isonzo begins.

25 August 1915

Italy declares war on Turkey.

26 August 1915

Italy declares war on Germany.

05 September 1915

Czar Nicholas II takes command of the Russian armies.

25 Sept-14 Oct 1915

Battle of Loos rages.

25 Sept-04 Nov 1915

The third Battle of Artois rages.

25 Sept-06 Oct 1915

French offensive in Champagne.

03 October 1915

Hermann Goring sets off on his first solo operational flight of the war

05 October 1915

Allied troops disembark at Salonika on the Balkan Front.

07 Oct20 Nov 1915

Austro-Hungarian invades Serbia.

14 October 1915

Bulgaria joins the Central powers.

16 November 1915

Hermann Goring claims his first kill as a fighter pilot.

30 November 1915

France, Britain, Russia and Japan sign the Pact of London.

05 Dec 1915-29 Apr 1916

Siege of Kut

1916 08-17 January 1916

The Central Powers knock Montenegro out of the war.

21 Feb-18 Dec 1916

Battle of Verdun rages on the Western Front.

Mar-Apr 1916

The second period of submarine warfare begins.

24-19 April 1916

The Irish Easter Rising rages.

15 May 1916

The Austro-Hungarian’s launch a new offensive on the Italian Front.

31 May-01 June 1916

At sea, the Battle of Jutland.

04 June-10 Oct 1916

On the Eastern Front, the Brusilov offensive is underway.

01 July-19 Nov 1916

The first Battle of the Somme begins. The British army lose a staggering 60,000 men through death or injury. All that was gained was a mile of strategically useless piece of ground. Before the Battle of the Somme finally ended; some 600,000 Allied lives would be lost. The German military leadership believed that the British soldiers were lions being led by donkeys.

04 Aug 1916-09 Jan 1917

The British drive the Turks out of Egypt.

06-17 August 1916

The 6th Battle of Isonzo is raging on the Italian Front.

27 August 1916

Romania enters the war on the side of the Allies.

29 August 1916

Von Hindenburg is made Commander of the German field armies, with Ludendorf as Quartermaster General.

Sept-Dec 1916

The Central Powers invade Romania.

04 September 1916

The Allies capture Dar Es Salaam in German East Africa.

02 October 1916

Hitler’s regiment is sent southwards from Flanders to the Somme.

Early October 1916

Hitler is wounded in the left thigh when a shell explodes in the dispatch runner’s dugout, Killing and wounding his comrades. Hitler is sent to a field hospital where he spends nearly 2

months recuperating (9th October -1st December 1916) in the Red Cross Hospital at Beelitz near Berlin.

02 November 1916

Hermann Goring is nearly killed as he attempts to shoot down a British Handley-Page bomber. Unaware that the bomber has an escort of British fighter planes. He was hit in his hip and was forced to crash land his plane. Luckily for him near a German field hospital. Goring would spend the next four months in hospital recuperating.

21 November 1916

Emperor Franz Josef of the Austro-Hungarian Empire dies.

December 1916

Lloyd George becomes the Prime Minister of Great Britain.

1917 February 1917

Hermann Goring returns to active service after his stay in hospital. This time he is posted to Jasta 26, which was based in Upper Alsace which was under the command of Bruno Loerzer, a pilot Goring had already served with.

24 Feb-11 March 1917

British retake Kut and capture Baghdad.

05 March 1917

Hitler returns to his regiment which is now based just a few miles to the north of Vimy on the Western Front.

15 March 1917

Czar Nicholas II of Russia abdicates. A provisional government is formed.

06 April 1917

The United States of America enter the war on the side of the Allies.

16-29 April 1917

Chemin des Dames offensive begins on the Western Front.

April 1917

Joseph Goebbels attends Bonn University to study classical philology, German literature and history.

24 Apr-22 May 1917

Battle of Doiran rages on the Balkan Front.

29 April 1917

Petain is appointed Chief of the French General Staff.

17 May 1917

Hermann Goring is given command of his own squadron, Jasta 27 which shares the same airfield as Jasta 26.

18 June-13 July 1917

On the Eastern Front, the Kerensky offensive rages.

27 June 1917

Greece enters the war on the side of the Allies.

06 July 1917

T.E Lawrence and his Arab allies capture Aqaba for the allied powers.

31 July-10 Nov 1917

The third Battle of Ypres rages.

Summer 1917

Hitler’s regiment to send to a location near Ypres.

August 1917

After heavy fighting, Hitler’s regiment is relieved from its position on the Western Front and is sent to Alsace.

03 September 1917

On the Eastern Front, The Germans capture Riga.

03 September 1917

The German and Bolshevik delegates meet at Brest-Litovsk to discuss the terms for the Russian surrender and treaty. The Treaty was finally signed on 3rd March 1918.

September 1917

Hitler takes 18 days home leave for the first time but decides to visit Berlin. He stays with one of his comrade’s parents.

Mid October 1917

Adolf Hitler returns to his regiment from leave. His regiment is now located at Champagne

24 Oct-10 Nov 1917

Battle of Caporetta rages on the Italian Front.

02 November 1917

The Balfour declaration (Get Info)

10 November 1917

The Bolsheviks overthrow the Russian provisional government.

20 Nov1917-08 Jan 1918

The Battle of Cambrai rages on the Western Front.

03 December 1917

The Bolshevik government in Russia sign an armistice with Germany.

11 December 1917

The British capture Jerusalem.

1918 08 January 1918

Woodrow Wilson, the US President, publishes his 14 point plan as a basis for peace.

28 January 1918

The Bolsheviks found the Red Army in the newly formed Soviet Union.

03 March 1918

Russia signs the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk with the Central powers.

21 Mar-18 July 1918

The Germans launch their spring offensive in the West.

23 Mar-15 Aug 1918

The Germans shell Paris.

02 April 1918

U.S troops arrive on the Western Front.

May 1918

The Allies intervene in the Russian Civil War.

May 1918

Joseph Goebbels leaves Bonn University to study at Freiburg near the Black Forest.

07 May 1918

Romania and the Central powers sign the Treaty of Bucharest.

18 July-10 Nov 1918

Allied counter-offensive rages on the Western Front.

Mid July 1918

Hitler’s regiment takes huge losses during the 2nd Battle of Marne.

04 August 1918

Hitler is awarded the Iron Cross 1st Class from his regimental commander Major von Tubeuf, though the nomination for the award originally came from one of his other commanders, Lieutenant Hugo Gutmann, a Jewish officer. The medal is believed to have been awarded for carrying an important dispatch through heavy enemy shelling, but according to the Third Reich’s Propaganda apparatus, schoolchildren were told that their Fuehrer received the Cross for capturing 15 French soldiers single-handedly.

Mid August

Hitler’s regiment is sent to Cambrai to stop a British offensive near Bapaume

Late August 1918

Hitler is sent on a telephone communications course near Nuremberg.

10 September 1918

Hitler takes another 18 days home leave and again visits Berlin.

14-29 September 1918

Allied counter attack makes gains in Bulgaria.

19 Sept-25 Oct 1918

British Troops capture Damascus, Beirut and Aleppo

End September 1918

Hitler returns to his regiment which is now stationed near Comines, which is under constant harassment from the British.

30 September 1918

An armistice is concluded between the Allies and Bulgaria.

13/14 October 1918

On the heights south of Wervick, which is part of the Ypres Front, Hitler with several of his comrades find themselves retreating from their dug-out after being hit from a mustard- gas attack which caused him to go temporally blind. He is sent for initial treatment in a field hospital in Flanders.

21 October 1918

Hitler, following the gas attack that left him temporally blind is sent to the military hospital in Pasewalk, near Stettin in Pomerania.

24 Oct-02 Nov 1918

Battle of Vittorio Veneto rages on the Italian front.

27 October 1918

Austro-Hungarian Empire asks Italy for an armistice.

28 October 1918

Mutiny of German sailors at Kiel.

30 October 1918

The Turkish 6th army in Mesopotamia surrenders to the Allies.

07 November 1918

The socialist Kurt Eisner proclaims Bavaria a republic.

09 November 1918

The German Kaiser abdicates and a republic (Weimar) is declared as Chancellor Max von Baden hands over his office to the Socialist Fredrich Ebert.

10 November 1918

Whilst recuperating in the military hospital in Pasewalk, Hitler and the other patients are informed by a Pastor of the Kaisers abdication and Germany’s defeat. The hearing of this news traumatised and left him a deeply bitter man.

11 November 1918

An armistice between the Allies and Germany takes effect. The First World War officially ends.

19 November 1918

Hitler is discharged from the military hospital in Pasewalk and returns to Munich via Berlin with a total of 15 marks and 30 pfennig’s to his name. He is attached to the 7th Company of the 1st Reserve Battalion of the 2nd Infantry Regiment.

November/December 1918

Hitler is attached to the Traunstein Prisoner-of-War camp

December 1918

The German workers and soldiers councils hold their first congress in Berlin. The congress calls for the nationalising of key industries and the seizure of the aristocracy’s lands. They also demand that von Hindenburg be sacked and the army be purged.

1919 05 January 1919

In Munich, the right wing German Workers Party (DAP) is founded by a Locksmith by the name of Anton Drexler and the sports journalist Karl Harrer. Drexler and Harrer are also joined by Gottfried Feder and Johann Dietrich Eckart

05 January 1919

The Spartacists organise a general strike in Berlin and they occupy several key buildings in the city. The German army move against the Berlin revolt and after five days they quash the Spartacists. The revolt was doomed from the start when the people of Berlin stayed at home and took no part in the rebellion. Karl Liebknect and Rosa Luxemburg, two key members of the revolt were arrested and murdered by officers of the Guards Cavalry Division. Their bodies were later dumped in the Landwehr Canal.

05-11 January 1919

Communists under the name Spartacists, stage a revolt in Germany.

18 January 1919

Peace conference begins at Versailles near Paris.

19 January 1919

National and local elections are held in Germany. The SPD (Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland’s-German Socialist Party) win 11,509100 votes making them the largest party in the Reichstag gaining a staggering 165 seats (37.9 % )

07 February 1919

The German Chancellor Friedrich Ebert at a Cabinet convention in Weimar condemns the terms the terms of the Armistice.

12 February 1919

After his spell as a guard at the Traunstein Prisoner-of-War camp Hitler returns to Munich and is assigned to the 2nd Demobilisation Company in preparation for being discharged from the army.

Hitler however has no wish to demobilised as the army has become his home and grabs any opportunity to delay his discharge. 13 February 1919

Hermann Goering writes to the German army’s settlement office requesting the be discharged from the armed forces. He offers to give up his pension rights if in exchange for being granted the rank of Captain as well as retaining the right to wear military uniform. It took the settlement office 4 months to agree to Goering’s request and from then on he was known as

17 February 1919

The German government signs the Armistice and is forced to give up territory to Poland. Captain Goering (retired).

21 February 1919

The Provisional Government of Munich’s Minister-President Eisner is assassinated by an aristocratic young officer by the name Graf von Acro-Valley, whom was at the time a student at Munich University.

11 March 1919

Famine spreads in Central Europe deeply effecting Germany.

23 March 1919

The socialist journalist Benito Mussolini forms the first Fascio di Combattimento in Italy.

06 April 1919

In Munich, a mixed group of left wing politicians and organisations meet in the Queens bedchamber of the Royal Palace and proclaim a Raterepublic (a Soviet Republic) of Bavaria under the leadership of a 26 year old poet called Ernst Toller.

12/13 April 1919

Troops loyal to the legitimate government of Bavaria overthrow the Ernst Toller’s Raterrepublic in Bavaria but were in turn defeated by Spartacist fighters and armed workers including soldiers sympathetic to the communist cause. A second Raterepublic under the hard-core communist Eugen Levine is proclaimed in Munich.

30 April 1919

The German delegates arrive at the Paris peace conference.

28 April 1919

The League of Nations is founded.

15 June 1919

Hitler attends an anti-Bolshevik course at Munich University which has been organised by Captain Karl Mayr, whom had taken over command of the Information Department. Hitler’s name was on Departments list of informants since May or early June 1919. Captain Mayr would later become a strong critic of Hitler and have to flee Germany to France after Hitler’s accession to power is captured after France falls to the Germans in 1940. Mayr would die as a prisoner in the Buchenwald Concentration camp.

17 June 1919

The German delegates are stoned by angry crowds as they leave the Paris Peace Conference for Berlin.

21 June 1919

The German navy scuttles her fleet at Scapa Flow.

28 June 1919

The Versailles Treaty is signed at the end of the Paris Peace Conference in the Hall of Mirrors within the Chateau of Versailles. The main function of the treaty is to prevent Germany from ever becoming a dominant European power again. To achieve this aim, the treaty forbade Germany from having an air force. It prevented her navy from having more than 6 warships over 10,000 tonnes, it also limited her army to a mere 100,000 soldiers. The treaty also confiscated large tracts of territories. Poland, which had not existed as an independent state since 1795, was re-formed. Danzig was given the status as a self-governing free city. Alsace-Lorraine, which had become part of Germany in 1871, was returned to France. The industrial area of the Saarland, was to be administered by the newly formed League of Nations’ for 15 years, and after which a referendum would be held there to decide its future status. All of Germany’s colonies were stripped from her. She was also forced to accept the blame for starting the war and the cost of the war would be met by Germany in reparation payments to the Allied powers as soon as the calculations have been decided. The severity of the treaty caused widespread resentment throughout Germany. The majority of Germans felt that they never been militarily defeated by the Allied powers but had been stabbed in the back. The treaty was soon dubbed the ‘Versailles Diktat’ and it greatly assisted the likes Adolf Hitler in their quest for power.

18 July 1919

The German Reichstag voted against separation of Church and State.

14 August 1919

The Weimar constitution comes into effect in Germany

15 August 1919

The French government states that it has lost 60 per cent of its air force because of the last war.

28 August 1919

The German army crush a Polish backed uprising in Upper Silesia.

September 1919

Adolf Hitler takes on the role of an army ‘education officer’. His responsibilities are to attend political meetings and report his findings to his superiors.

06 September 1919

The Austrian parliament agrees to sign the Versailles Treaty.

10 September 1919

Treaty of Saint-Germain is signed in Austria by the Allies and Austrians.

12 September 1919

Hitler attends a political meeting being held by the German Workers Party (DAP) on behalf of his regimental Information Department. Hitler erupts into a rage when DAP members discuss

the possibility of Bavaria breaking from the Reich. Anton Drexler is impressed with the rawness and passion in Hitler and decides to encourage him to join the party. 16 September 1919

At the request from Captain Mayr, who was responding to a question from another superior, asks Adolf Hitler to produce a report on the possible dangers to the German nation from the Jews. In it he states: Anti-Semitism on purely emotional grounds will find its ultimate expression in the form pogroms. The anti-Semitism of reason, however, must lead to the planned legal opposition to and elimination of the privileges of the Jews. Its ultimate goal, however, must absolutely be the removal of Jews altogether. Only a government of national power and never a government of national impotence will be capable of both.

16 September 1919

Adolf Hitler joins the German Workers Party as member No 555, later however he would claim that he was member No 7 and even went as far as doctoring his membership card to illustrate this. He is given responsibility for recruiting new members and as Party Propaganda leader.

October 1919

The Allied forces end their participation in the Russian Civil War.

02 October 1919

The French parliament ratifies the Versailles Treaty.

16 October 1919

Hitler speaks to a crowd of over 100 people who have attends one of the D.A.P’s meetings in Munich. The thirty minute speech electrifies the audience and confirms Hitler’s status as an exceptional orator.

29 October 1919

It is reported that anti-Semitism is spreading in Germany.

19 November 1919

Benito Mussolini along with 37 other Fascists are arrested following riots after the Socialist election victory in Italy.

27 November 1919

The Allied powers and Bulgaria sign the Treaty of Neuilly.

15 December 1919

In Britain, Sir Hugh Trenchard, commander of the RAF proposes that the RAF become a permanent force.

1920 12 January 1920

It is believed that some 29,000 Jews have been murdered in the Ukraine.

02 February 1920

The Soviet government recognises Estonia’s independence.

03 February 1920

The Allies demand that Germany hand over 890 political and military leaders suspected of committing war crimes.

05 February 1920

The German Reichstag refuses the Allies demand to hand over alleged war criminals.

10 February 1920

The German Ex-Crown Prince Wilhelm offers to hand himself over to the Allies for trial in place of the 890 alleged war criminals.

2 February 1920

The German police in Berlin arrest 21 people after a wave of anti-Semitism rocks the capital.

24 February 1920

The German Workers Party officially change its name to the National Socialist German Workers Party (Nazi). At the meeting, which was held at the Festsaal of the Hafbrauhaus over 2,000 people hear Hitler’s speech.

01 March 1920

Admiral Horthy becomes the head of state of Hungary.

31 March 1920

Hitler leaves the army to pursue a political career.

06 April 1920

French troops take over Frankfurt.

25 April 1920

The League of Nations propose fixing Germany’s war indemnity at 3,000,000,000 marks a year for 30 years.

28 May 1920

A state of war is declared between the Soviet Russia and Poland. Poland makes an appeal to the West for assistance.

04 June 1920

The Allies and Hungary sign the Treaty of Trianon.

06 June 1920

The German Reichstag elections are held with the SPD gaining 6,104,400 votes, a lose from the previous results of over five million votes even though they are the largest party in the Reichstag.

09 June 1920

King George V opens the Imperial War Museum at Crystal Palace, London.

22 June 1920

In France, the Allies fix German war reparations at £12.500 million.

01 July 1920

The German government surrenders her largest airship, L71 to Britain.

18 July 1920

The Ex-Kaiser’s youngest son, Joachim commits suicide at Potsdam near Berlin.

10 August 1920

The Allies and Turkey sign the Treaty of Sevres.

20 September 1920

The League of Nations approves Germany’s Eupen and Malmedy being given to Belgium.

06 October 1920

Soviet Russia and Poland sign an armistice at Riga, Latvia.

14 October 1920

Soviet Russia recognises the independence of Finland.

09 November 1920

The city of Danzig in Poland is officially proclaimed a free city.

10 November 1920

The body of ‘the unknown soldier’ arrives from France for internment within Westminster Abbey.

11 November 1920

The body of ‘the unknown soldier’ is buried under the Arc de Triomphe.

December 1920

The bankrupt newspaper Volkischer Beobachter is bought by wealthy supporters and given to the Hitler’s NSDAP.

15 December 1920

Austria joins the League of Nations along with China.

1921

06 January 1921

In Berlin statistics indicate that some 485,000 children in the capital are seriously diseased and undernourished.

13 January 1921

The German’s announce their intention to build 1443 ton submarine which is capable of travelling at 17.5 knots and with a 35mm armour plate.

21 January 1921

In Germany, The Abwehr (Counter-Intelligence agency of the armed forces) is formed. Its first commander is naval officer Kapitan Zur see Patzig. Patzig is strong opponent to Hitler’s Nazis.

28 January 1921

The Allies finally set Germanys war reparations at a staggering £10 billion over 42 years.

February 1921

Some 6,500 people come to hear Hitler give a speech in the Huge tent of Munich’s Krone Circus. Hitler has become indispensable to the Party.

19 February 1921

France and Poland sign a military and economic pact.

20 March 1921

In Germany the electorate representing Upper Silesia votes to remain part of Germany.

24 March 1921

Some 20 people are killed after a Communist attempt to take Hamburg.

29 April 1921

The Allied governments fix Germany’s war reparations at a staggering 200 million gold marks.

15 May 1921

In the Italian national elections, Mussolini’s Fascists win 22 seats.

21 July 1921

Members of eth NSDAP, without Hitler’s knowledge start negotiations with the German Socialist Party in an attempt to merge the two organisations and to move their Headquarters from Munich to Berlin. When Adolf Hitler hears of the negotiations he threatens to resign if the merger goes ahead. Knowing that the Party would be doomed if they lost Hitler, the merger collapses, At the same time, Hitler demands the chairmanship of the party and that he is given full authority over the movement.

29 July 1921

Adolf Hitler becomes the leader (Fuhrer) of the National Socialist German Workers Party.

04 August 1921

Russia suffers from a famine sweeping the country.

06 August 1921

The German Reichstag proposes a huge increase in taxes to pay for Germany’s war reparations.

10 August 1921

In Paris the Supreme Council decides to partition Silesia between Poland and Germany.

15 August 1921

The economic situation in Germany deteriorates as the German mark declines in value, one British pound is now worth 340 marks.

29 September 1921

The German mark continues to decline in value. A British pound is now worth 500 marks.

04 October 1921

To combat the declining value of the mark, Germany puts a 100 per cent surcharge on all imports.

17 October 1921

The German mark continues to fall. One British pound can now fetch 720 marks.

22 October 1921

The German government resigns as Germany falls deeper and deeper in economic mess.

07 November 1921

One British pound is now worth 1,200 German marks as the German economy slips into chaos.

07 November 1921

Benito Mussolini takes the title Il Duce.

1922

January 1922

Heinrich Himmler meets Ernst Rohm for the first time in Munich.

02 January 1922

The German mark hits more trouble as one British pound buys 32,000 marks.

05 January 1922

In Washington, The arms conference adopts the declaration outlawing submarine warfare against merchant shipping.

06 January 1922

The Allies decide to postpone German war reparations.

06 February 1922

The Washington Naval Treaty limits the size and numbers of certain types of warships.

07 January 1922

The arms conference in Washington agrees to outlaw the use of poisonous gas in wartime.

31 January 1922

The cost of living in Germany has risen to 73.7 per cent since January 1921.

06 February 1922

The arms conference in Washington comes to a close.

14 February 1922

In Geneva, Polish and German delegates meet to discuss the dispute in Upper Silesia.

26 February 1922

France and Britain agree to a 20 year alliance in Paris.

10 March 1922

In Germany, the Reichstag orders the removal of monarchy emblems from public buildings.

14 March 1922

In Rome, tensions between Fascists and Socialists come to a head as fighting erupts.

03 April 1922

Soviet Russia’s Joseph Stalin becomes the Communist Party General Secretary.

16 April 1922

Germany and Soviet Russia agree to economic co-operation by signing the Treaty of Rapallo.

18 April 1922

In Genoa, Germany is blocked from talks because of the economic deal they completed with Soviet Russia (the Treaty of Rapallo) on 16th April 1922.

26 May 1922

In Moscow, Lenin suffers from a stroke.

31 May 1922

In Paris, The Reparation Commission decide to postpone Germany’s 1922 reparation repayments.

13 June 1922

Austria declares that it is bankrupt.

14 June 1922

In Russia it is agreed that a three man council will govern Soviet Russia while Lenin recovers from his stroke.

03 July 1922

In Paris, Britain’s Lloyd George proposes a world disarmament policy to the League of Nations.

09 July 1922

Germany faces total financial ruin as the mark collapses again.

19 July 1922

Benito Mussolini warns the Italian government of trouble if it continues to suppress his Fascists.

3-4 August 1922

Mussolini’s Fascists seize control of Milan city council.

05 August 1922

Albert Einstein flees Germany after he is threatened with assassination from an extreme group of radical nationalists. The same group who murdered the German foreign minister Walter Rathenau.

24 August 1922

The German mark begins to collapse as a brief recovery. One British pound is now worth 8,000 marks.

31 August 1922

The Allied governments give Germany a six-month reprieve in war reparations.

24 October 1922

In Italy, the Fascists demand the resignation of the Italian government and the formation of a Fascist government in it s place.

28 October 1922

Mussolini’s Fascist march on Rome.

30 October 1922

Benito Mussolini becomes Italy’s new Prime Minister.

November 1922

Rudolf Hoess joins the NSDAP as member 3240.

01 November 1922

The German mark continues to slide. One British pound can now buy 20,000 marks.

November 1922

Hermann Goering attends a mass demonstration in Konigsplatz. It was here that he first encountered Adolf Hitler whom had also attended the demonstration. After a few speakers had their say the crowd became impatient and started chanting for Hitler to give a speech but Hitler refused. As soon as Goering discovered why Hitler had refused to make a speech he was deeply impressed and totally agreed with him.

14 November 1922

The German Chancellor Joseph Wirth resigns from office because of the worsening economic situation in Germany.

16 November 1922

Benito Mussolini warns the Italian Chamber of Deputies to do as they are told or be dissolved.

21 November 1922

Clemenceau, the Ex-Premier of France warns that Germany’s fragile democracy is under threat from militants’

22 November 1922

Wilhelm Cuno becomes Germany’s new Chancellor.

25 November 1922

Mussolini is given dictatorial powers by the Italian Chamber of Deputies for one year.

30 November 1922

Adolf Hitler addresses a National Socialist rally in Munich. Some 50,000 supporters attended.

26 December 1922

The Allies War Reparation Committee claim that Germany has deliberately defaulted on her war repayments.

30 December 1922

Soviet Russia is now officially known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR)

31 December 1922

France rejects a non-aggression pact with Germany.

1923 02 January 1923

In Paris, the Allies reduce German reparation payments to £2,800 million

06 January 1922

The U.S Senate votes to withdraw its troops currently stationed in Germany.

09 January 1923

French troops prepare to occupy the German town of Essen as a reprisal for Germany defaulting in her reparation payments.

11 January 1923

French and Belgian troops enter Essen unmolested.

21 January 1923

In Germany, miners announce a strike in protest to French and Belgian occupation of German territory.

27 January 1923

The NSDAP holds its first party rally in Munich.

February 1923

Hermann Goering is given command of the SA (Sturmabteilungen) better known as the ‘Brownshirts)

01 February 1923

In Germany, French troops prevent much needed coal being transported to other parts of Germany from the occupied Ruhr.

05 February 1923

Mussolini orders the arrest of several hundred Socialists in Italy.

25 February 1923

French troops seize control of more German territory along the Rhine and tighten their blockade against the rest of Germany.

March 1923

Hermann Goering is made commander of the 1,000 strong SA.

03 March 1923

French troops take control of the Rhine ports of Mannheim and Karlruhe.

31 March 1923

Nine Germans are killed and at least 43 are injured during a riot in the town of Essen against French troops, who had arrived at the Krupp Steel Works to requisition their trucks.

23 April 1923

In Italy, the Catholic Party resigns from Mussolini’s government.

05 June 1923

French troops seize railways in the Ruhr.

09 June 1923

A Military coup in Bulgaria topples Premier M. Stambouliski.

27 April 1923

In Rome, Pope Pius XI condemns the Franco-Belgian occupation of the Ruhr.

30 June 1923

A bomb planted on a train at Duisberg, Germany, kills 10 Belgian troops.

06 July 1923

Berlin is told to condemn the violence in the Ruhr by the French and Belgian governments or they will sever relations with them.

08 July 1923

The Turks and the Allies agree to a peace treaty which will restore to Turkey the Aegean areas and Armenia which she lost after the last war.

10 July 1923

In Italy, Mussolini bans all opposition parties.

12 July 1923

The British Chancellor of the Exchequer tells France and Belgium to withdraw their troops from the Ruhr for the fear that it may cause a new world conflict.

20 July 1923

The British Chancellor proposes a committee be set up to investigate Germany’s ability to pay its war reparations.

29 July 1923

France and Belgium reject Britain’s proposals to set up a committee to investigate Germany’s ability to pay her war reparations.

August 1923

With prompting from Ernst Rohm Heinrich Himmler joins the National Socialist German Workers Party (NSDAP) with the membership number 42,404

07 August 1923

In Germany, the financial crises deepens. The British pound is now worth 15 million marks.

11/12 August 1923

The German Chancellor Cuno resigns as Germany’s economy collapses. Gustav Stresemann takes over his office.

September -October 1923

Heinrich Himmler joins the ‘Black Reichswehr’ which is also known as ‘Werner Company’. The Black Reichswehr is used to defeat leftist Saxon and Thüringen regimes.

06 September 1923

The British pound is now valued at 200 million German marks.

12 September 1923

The British pond is now worth 600 million German marks.

15 September 1923

The Reichsbank in Germany increases its rate to 90%, in an attempt to stem the demand for money.

26 September 1923

In Germany, the President Friedrich Ebert declares a state of emergency throughout Germany.

20 October 1923

Bavaria breaks off relations with the Reich.

21 October 1923

A republic is proclaimed in the Rhineland.

22 October 1923

The British pound is now valued at staggering 183,000,000,000 German marks.

27 October 1923

The French send in troops to occupy the Rhineland areas of Bonn and Wiesbaden as retaliation for Germany’s failure to fulfil promised timber shipments.

02 November 1923

The Social Democrats resign from the German government.

06 November 1923

In Berlin, at least 1,000 shops are looted during a spate of ant-Semite violence.

08 November 1923

Hitler’s NSDAP movement attempt a coup (the Beer Hall Putsch) in Munich.

11 November 1923

Hitler is arrested at Essing, a village just outside Munich, for his part in the attempted coup.

13 November 1923

The French finally agree to the setting up of a committee to investigate Germany’s ability to pay her war reparations.

15 November 1923

The German government issue a new unit of currency, a banknote worth a staggering 1,000,000,000 marks in an attempt to beat inflation.

15 November 1923

The German mark is now in effect valueless; a loaf of bread in Germany now costs over 200 billion marks.

16 November 1923

Great Britain and Italy reject France’s proposal that it should occupy more parts of Germany.

17 November 1923

The Reichsbank in Berlin announces that its branches will no longer accept deposits after November.

23 November 1923

After losing a vote of confidence, the German Chancellor Stresemann resigns from office.

29 November 1923

Dr Wilhelm Marx is appointed as German Chancellor.

29 November 1923

An international committee is set up under US banker William Dawes to investigate Germany’s economy and her ability to pay her war reparations.

06 December 1923

In Britain, Winston Churchill is defeated in the seat of West Leicester.

25 December 1923

Johann Dietrich Eckart dies of heart failure in Berchtesgaden, Germany.

1924 21 January 1924

Vladimir Llyich Ulyanov, known to the world simply as Lenin, dies from a stroke.

22 January 1924

In Moscow a council is appointed to succeed Lenin. Leon Kamenev, Gergory Zinoviev and Joseph Stalin becomes the council.

25 January 1924

Premier Eduard Benes of Czechoslovakia and the French Premier Poincare sign a treaty of alliance in Paris.

26 January 1924

Petrograd is renamed Leningrad in honour of the Late Soviet leader Lenin.

27 January 1924

Mussolini’s Italy signs a pact with Yugoslavia which allows Italy to annex the free city of Fiume.

27 January 1924

Mussolini dissolves the Chamber of Deputies claiming that Parliamentary rule is causing anarchy.

01 February 1924

Britain recognises the USSR.

02 February 1924

In Moscow, Alexis Rykov becomes President of the Council of Commissars.

07 February 1924

Italy recognises the USSR and signs a commercial treaty with them.

26 February 1924

Adolf Hitler along with Erich von Ludendorff goes on trial for their part in the failed putsch in Munich.

13 March 1924

Ahead of the general election, the Reichstag in Germany is dissolved.

Mid February 1924

Strasser is arrested whilst trying to recruit an undercover police officer for the banned Nazi Party. He is charged with aiding and abetting high treason and sentenced to 15 months where he joined Hitler in Landsberg prison but was immediately released when he was elected as a member of the Lower Bavaria in the local parliament as leader of the V-S-B (Volkischer-Sozialer-Block)

01 April 1924

Adolf Hitler is sentenced to 5 years in prison for his part in the attempted ‘Beer Hall Putsch’ on the 8th November 1923 but could be out on parole in 6 months time.

01 April 1924

Ernst Rohm is released is released from prison.

15 April 1924

In Paris, Britain and France agree to the Dawes Plan for German war reparations. The Dawes Plan, which was drawn up by the US banker Charles Dawes allows Germany to attain a loan of £45 million to help stabilise the German economy.

16 April 1924

Germany agrees to the Dawes Plan.

17 April 1924

Mussolini’s Fascists sweep to victory in the Italian general election.

04 May 1924

The Reichstag elections are held in Germany with the SPD gaining 100 seats by winning 6,008,900 votes (20.5 %) a loss of nearly one hundred thousand votes. Though still making them the largest single party in the Reichstag, the Nationalists (DNVP) came very close to the SPD by netting an incredible 95 seats (5,696,500) which accumulated to winning 19.5 % of the vote. With Hitler still in prison the NSDAP only manages to capture 6.5 % of the votes cast (1,918,300), this equalled 32 seats in the Reichstag.

07 July 1924

Adolf Hitler, announces is resignation as leader of the NSDAP and the withdrawal from politics in general. Hitler took this time to concentrate on finishing his book (Mein Kampf).

24 July 1924

Heinrich Himmler becomes Gregor Strasser’s secretary within the Lower Bavaria National Socialist Freedom Movement.

02 August 1924

In London, the Allied governments all agree to accept the Dawes Plans and urges Germany to officially endorse it.

08 August 1924

The Reichsbank has now become independent from the Reichstag. This is in line with the Dawes Plan which is aimed at preventing the German government from blindly printing banknotes as a way to control inflation. The Reichsbank, to promote a boost in confidence in the German financial system, they have decided to replace the German mark with the new currency, the Reichsmark.

17 August 1924

French and Belgian troops leave the German towns of Offenburg and Appenweier.

29 August 1924

In Germany, the Reichstag endorses the Dawes Plan.

01 September 1924

Germany makes its first war reparation payment to the Allies following the Dawes Plan.

12 September 1924

The Italian Fascist Deputy is assassinated by communists on a tram in Rome.

22 September 1924

The League of Nations in Geneva a draft document making war illegal.

23 September 1924

The German government applies to join the League of Nations.

October 1924

Ernst Rohm writes to Ludendorff claiming that the SA is independent of its political wing (the NSDAP) and he demand its representation in the Reichstag.

01 October 1924

The draft plan to outlaw war was put before the League of Nations Assembly for deliberation.

04 October 1924

Mussolini declares that his Fascist Party is above the law.

28 October 1924

France recognises the Soviet Union.

11 November 1924

In New York, prices hit record highs on Wall Street as 2,258,399 shares are traded.

12 November 1924

Italy’s Mussolini opens his country’s new one-chamber parliament.

13 November 1924

In Italy, Mussolini introduces a bill that will allow women to vote in national elections.

30 November 1924

The last French and Belgian troops pullout of the Ruhr.

01 December 1924

Britain signs a commerce treaty with Germany.

05 December 1924

Mussolini pushes through a bill in the Italian parliament to heavily suppress the freedom of the press in Italy.

07 December 1924

The German general elections are held with the SPD winning 131 seats (7,881,000, 26.0%)) thus keeping them as the majority party in the Reichstag and with 103 (6,205,800 votes cast, 20.5%) the NSDAP vote collapsed to only 907,300 (3.0%) voters backing them, they ended up with 14 seats, a loss of 18 seats. The KPD (Communists) vote falls from 3,693,300 to 2,709,100, a loss of 17 seats to 45.

11 December 1924

The German Chancellor Dr Wilhelm Marx resigns as Chancellor after the conservative politicians oppose the Dawes Plan.

18 December 1924

Pope Pius XI denounces the Soviet Union.

20 December 1924

At 1215 hours, Adolf Hitler is freed from Landsberg prison. The authorities believe that with the Nazis in a financial mess and disintegrating fast Hitler was no longer a threat.

1925

03 January 1925

Mussolini assumes full dictatorial powers.

05 January 1925

Mussolini forms a new Fascist cabinet.

07 January 1925

The Germans launch Emden, their first warship since the Great War.

15 January 1925

In Berlin, Hans Luther becomes the German Chancellor

February 1925

Joseph Goebbels joins the NSDAP and soon becomes a good friend of Gregor Strasser

14 February 1925

The bans that had been put into place against the NSDAP and the SA are officially lifted in Bavaria.

17 February 1925

Hitler meets with Gregor Strasser, who had just recently resigned as leader of the NSFB (National Socialist Freedom Movement)

25 February 1925

After Gregor Strasser’s meeting with Hitler on the 17th, he joins the newly reformed NSDAP with the membership number 9. Strasser soon became The Nazis Gauleiter (Gau leader-district leader)

27 February 125

Adolf Hitler makes his first public appearance in Munich since his release from prison.

March 1925

After making a provocative speech to some 4,000 Party supporters, the authorities in Munich ban Hitler from speaking in public. A ban that would last for 3 years.

04 April 1925

In Berlin, Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg announces that he will stand as a candidate for the German Presidency.

10 April 1925

Edouard Herriot resigns as Premier of France.

14 April 1925

King Boris of Bulgaria survives an assassination attempt on his life when his car is ambushed in Sofia by Bolsheviks.

17 April 1925

Paul Painleve becomes the French Premier.

25/26 April 1925

Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg is elected as Germany first elected President.

May 1925

Ernst Rohm resigns the leadership of the SA because of difficulties with Hitler concerning the role of the SA.

06 May 1925

Republicans in Germany protest against the election of Field Marshal von Hindenburg as President.

12 May 1925

Field Marshal von Hindenburg is sworn in as President of Germany.

16 June 1925

The French government accepts Germany’s offer of a security pact.

14 July 1925

French and Belgian troops begin to withdraw from the Ruhr in Germany.

18 July 1925

The first part (vol 1) of Adolf Hitler’s ‘Mein Kampf’ (My struggle) is published in Germany.

22 July 1925

In Germany, President von Hindenburg grants an amnesty to prisoners jailed before June 15th 1915.

17 August 1925

Rioting takes place in Vienna after Zionists open their conference in the city.

27 August 1925

France pulls her troops out of the Ruhr.

01 September 1925

Ernst Thalmann becomes the leader of the German Communist Party (KPD).

15 September 1925

Germany is invited to attend the Locarno security conference which is to be staged in Switzerland.

5th -16th October 1925

The Locarno Conference convenes in Switzerland.

22 October 1925

Greek troops cross into Bulgaria after a border dispute.

24 October 1925

Bulgaria and Greece agree to allow the League of Nations help resolve their border dispute.

29 October 1925

Greece withdraws her troops from Bulgarian territory as requested by the League of Nations.

05 November 1925

In Italy, Mussolini bans all left-wing parties.

06 November 1925

Joseph Goebbels meets Adolf Hitler personally for the first time after Hitler summons him after

hearing glowing reports about him. Hitler hoped to woo Goebbels away from his rival Gregor Strasser’s camp and into his own in Munich. 06 November 1925

In the Soviet Union, Kliment Voroshilov replaces Trotsky as head of the Red Army.

07 November 1925

In Italy, the Liberal Party merges with Mussolini’s Fascists.

09 November 1925

The Nazis establish the Schutzstaffel (protection squad commonly known as the SS)

20 November 1925

The Freemasons and other secret societies are banned by the Fascist government in Italy.

23 November 1925

Painleve resigns as the French Premier.

26 November 1925

The German Reichstag approves the Locarno agreement.

28 November 1925

Aristide Briand becomes the new French Premier.

01 December 1925

The Locarno treaties are signed by European powers.

05 December 1925

In Germany, Dr Luther resigns as Chancellor.

24 December 1925

In Italy, Benito Mussolini declares that he is answerable only to the King of Italy.

1926 03 January 1926

In Rome, Mussolini now holds the offices of prime minister; foreign minister and war minister.

29 January 1926

In Russia, all students have to do compulsory military training.

31 January 1926

In Italy, Benito Mussolini assumes the power to rule by decree.

03 February1926

In Czechoslovakia, the Czech becomes the country’s official language and rights of minority groups are guaranteed.

08 February 1926

The German government applies to join the League of Nations.

09 March 1926

The League of Nations in Geneva consider Germany’s request to join the League.

10 March 1926

Gregor Strasser, Adolf Hitler’s main rival in the Nazi Party is confined to bed for several weeks after his car was hit by a freight train at the level crossing in Altenessen. Strasser suffered severe leg injuries. Hitler takes this opportunity to continue his wooing of Joseph Goebbels.

13 March 1926

The League of Nations refuses Germany a permanent seat on the League council.

07 April 1926

Joseph Goebbels meets Hitler again in Munich. Hitler turns on the charm and organises a grand reception for his future prodigy in attempt to encourage him away from the Strasser camp.

07 April 1926

Violet Gibson, shoots Benito Mussolini in an assassination attempt. The bullet grazes Mussolini’s nose but apart from that he remains unhurt.

24 April 1926

Germany signs a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union.

May 1926

Hitler calls a general membership meeting in Munich. The German National Socialist Workers Association in Munich is made the sole bearer of the movement.

12 May 1926

The German Chancellor Luther resigns from office.

17 May 1926

In Germany, Socialist Dr Wilhelm Marx is appointed Chancellor after Luther quits.

Early July 1926

The NSDAP (Nazi Party) holds its first rally since the failed putsch. The rally is held at Weimar in Thuringa.

08 September 1926

Germany joins the League of Nations.

September 1926

Hitler appoints Pfeffer von Salomon as national commander of the newly reconstituted SA, thus removing another ally of Gregor Strasser and placing him firmly in his own camp. At about this time the newly formed Schutzstaffel (protection Squads or simply better known as the SS) which was a development out of Hitler’s original bodyguard, the Strosstrupp Adolf Hitler came under von Salomon’s command.

07 October 1926

Italy becomes a-one-party-state as Mussolini assumes total power.

23 October 1926

In Italy, women are banned from holding public office.

31 October 1926

In Rome, A 15-year-old boy is lynched after he shoots at Mussolini after a failed assassination attempt. The bullet tears the Fascist leaders’ coat.

02 November 1926

Mussolini survives an assassination attempt by an 18-year-old boy. After the incident Pope Pius claims that the Duce has God’s full protection.

07 November 1926

Joseph Goebbels arrives in Berlin as Hitler’s Gau (District leader) for that city, replacing Dr Ernst Schlange.

The Nazis had made very little progress in Berlin due to the fact that Berlin was a

communist stronghold. A few members of the party believed and hoped that Goebbels would fail in turning the tide in favour of the Nazi party.

He is met by Otto Strasser, Gregory’s brother, who

had arranged for him to stay with the editor of the Berliner Lokalzeitung, Hans Steiger and his wife in their spacious apartment near Potsdamer Bridge. 14 November 1926

To grab much needed media attention, Joseph Goebbels, the new NSDAP Gau of Berlin, marches a group of Nazi Brownshirts (SA) through the heavily Red area of Neukolln. The Brown Shirts, who were heavily outnumbered fled after being attacked by the Rotfrontkamperbund (Red Front Fighters) after Goebbels made a provocative speech.

He had achieved what he had set out

to achieve, that being to let everyone know that he meant business. 25 November 1926

In Italy, Mussolini restores the death penalty.

10 December 1926

Adolf Hitler has the second part of ‘Mein Kampf’ (My Struggle) published.

15 December 1926

In Italy, the Roman fasces is adopted as the country’s national emblem.

25 December 1926

In Japan Hirohito becomes Emperor.

1927 Early January 1927

Joseph Goebbels finds new 4 room premises with access to telephones at 44 Lutzowstrasse for his Berlin headquarters.

17 February 1927

In Germany Martin Bormann joins the NSDAP as member 60,508.

19 June 1927

Heinrich Himmler finishes reading the first volume of Adolf Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

04 July 1927

Joseph Goebbels new Nazi newspaper, Der Angriff (The Attack) hits the streets of Berlin.

September 1927

Heinrich Himmler is made Second-in-Command of the SS.

13 September 1927

On behalf of the SS leadership, Himmler issues his SS Order No 1, which states a strict dress and conduct code for members of the SS. SS men were to wear their uniforms at all times whilst on duty or at party meetings. They also had to parade for inspection prior to every meeting. They were not allowed to smoke, take part or interrupt speeches, and they were forbidden to leave the meeting whilst the speeches where taking place. SS men were not to take sides in quarrels and not involve themselves in anything that did not concern them. They were also to take on intelligence duties, that is to say that they were to gather information on their own political leaders and the SA as well as external political movements.

02 October 1927

President von Hindenburg celebrates his 80th birthday and the Reichstag grants an amnesty for all those who had either been imprisoned or exiled for political offences. Hermann Goering would use the amnesty to return to Germany after he fled the country after the failed Beer Hall Putsch.

December 1927

Heinrich Himmler reads the second volume of Hitler’s Mein Kampf.

27 December 1927

Josef Stalin is confirmed as Soviet leader.

1928

January 1928

Under Stalin’s orders, Trotsky is exiled to Alma Ata.

20 January 1928

Heinrich Himmler is appointed as deputy leader of the SS.

31 March 1928

The ban on the NSDAP is lifted.

April 1928

In an attempt to alleviate the fears of the land-owing classes in time for the forthcoming elections Hitler claims that ‘Point 17’ of the Party Programme is solely aimed at Jews. Point 17 proclaimed: 1

20 May 1928

A reform of land-ownership and an end to land speculation.

In Germany the Reichstag elections takes place. In this election Hitler’s NSDAP decide to put up a candidate for all of the 35 electoral districts. Hitler as yet, still cannot stand for the Reichstag

as he still does not have German citizenship even though he had renounced his Austrian citizenship back in 1925. The Nazis had a disappointing result, they polled only 809,771 votes throughout the country, down 100,000 whilst the communists increased their vote by some 500,000 to 3.25 million. Tit was however the Social Democrats night as they stormed home with an impressive 9 million votes. Out of the Reichstag’s 500 seats, the Nazis could only claim 12, in which two of them went to Goebbels and Goering. 13 June 1928

The 12 Nazi Reichstag deputies take their seats in the German parliament.

03 July 1928

Heinrich Himmler and Margarete Boden, the daughter of a German landowner in Gonzerzewo, West Prussia, are married.

August 1928

Hitler calls a conference of the Party leadership. Here he switches the Part’s priorities from the cities to the countryside and redraws the boundaries of each of the Gaues in which the Party Party is organised.

27 August 1928

Great Britain, France, Germany, Japan, the USA, and most of the members of the League of Nations sign up to the Kellogg-Briand Pact. The Pact is designed to renounce war as a means to settling disputes amongst nations. Its major flaw however was that the nations had no real power to enforce the Pact.

1929 January 1929

A second conference of the NSDAP Party leadership is sees the completion of the reorganisation of the Party which had originally been started two years previously.

20 January 1929

After exactly one year as deputy leader of the SS Heinrich Himmler is appointed Reichsfuhrer of the SS. The SS at this stage of its development barely consisted of 280 men, which was scattered across Germany.

February 1929

Benito Mussolini and Cardinal Gaspari, the Popes Secretary of State, signs a treaty in the Lateran Palace. The treaty will establish a Vatican free state within Rome.

15 February 1929

In Germany, it is estimated that there is now some 3.2 million people without employment.

24 March 1929

Mussolini’s Fascist Party receives almost 100% of the votes cast in the Italian elections.

11 April 1929

Germany refuses Leon Trotsky’s appeal for political asylum.

19 April 1929

In Italy, the Roman ‘fasces’ is adopted into Italy’s national coat-of-arms.

20 April 1929

King Victor Emmanuel of Italy and Benito Mussolini open the country’s first all fascist parliament.

May 1929

Elections held in Germany.

01 May 1929

In Berlin, Eight people die in the May Day marches as communists clash with the police.

03 May 1929

Berlin is declared a city in a state of siege as nine more people die in riots.

22 May 1929

Benito Mussolini’s fascist government bans beauty shows claiming that they are immoral.

07 June 1929

The Vatican State comes officially into existence as the Lateran Treaty comes into effect.

12 June 1929

Diarist Anne Frank is born in Frankfurt on Main in Germany.

28 July 1929

In Geneva, forty-eight countries sign a convention for the treatment of prisoners-of-war.

03-04 August 1929

The NSDAP holds its most impressive rally to-date. Some 200,000 party members and supporters attend the Munich based rally and some 60,000 Uniformed SA men parade before Hitler.

24 October 1929

The New York Stock Market collapses (Black Thursday) as nearly 13 million shares changed hands as panic selling caused widespread chaos. By midday the leading bankers In New York held an emergency meeting to discuss the crises and this meeting spread rumour and panic which in turn sent prices back up again and in turn fuelled the crises. The effect of Black Thursday was especially felt in Germany as the flow of US dollars that had been helping to prop up the German Economy and war reparations was abruptly cut off and all short term loans were called in which in turn burst the economic bubble that was fuelling the German economy and plummeting it eventually into an abyss which in turn created the perfect conditions for Hitler’s National Socialists to reap electoral capital.

17 November 1929

The NSDAP wins 132.097 (5.8%) votes in the city of Berlin council elections. The Communists still hold the majority vote by winning a staggering 40.6% of the total votes cast.

12 December 1929

The last British troops on the Rhine leave their base at Wiesbaden.

1930 January 1930

The National assembly in France vote in favour of building the Maginot Line.

January 1930

Brown Shirt member Horst Wessel, leader of Storm Unit 5, the Alexanderplatz section, who had been assigned to the run-down and notorious Fischerkiez area of Berlin. It was here that his activities soon made him a marked man. After the communists discovered where he lived, they sent a group of men to carry out the punishment, that punishment was a bullet to the head.

January 1930

The Strasser brothers announce that they intend to launch a new daily paper on 1st March 1930, this angers Goebbels as he believes it is a blatant attempt by the brothers to destroy his own local paper, Der Angriff and as a way of undermining him as Gau of Berlin.

05 January 1930

Stalin declares all farms in the Soviet Union as collectives.

15 January 1930

In Britain, Ramsay MacDonald urges all the world powers scrap their battleships.

21January-22 April 1930

In London, A naval conference agrees to limit the size of fleets.

29 January 1930

Heinrich Himmler writes to his old mentor Ernst Rohm, who is acting as a military advisor in Bolivia, stating that the SS are growing in numbers and that enlistment in the organisation is becoming more and more selective.

23 February 1930

After six weeks in critical condition Horst Wessel dies in Hospital. Joseph Goebbels turns the death of the volunteer in a propaganda coup and turns Wessel into a Nazi Martyr.

01 March 1930

Horst Wessel is given a martyrs funeral.

10 March 1930

The unemployment levels in Britain tops 1.5 million.

27 March 1930

The coalition government in Germany collapses after they could not agree on unemployment insurance contributions.

Hermann Muller, the Social Democrat Chancellor tried in vain to get

the President von Hindenburg to allow him to rule by emergency decree but the aging President refused to allow this and decided to call new elections and at the same time appoints a new

Chancellor, Heinrich Bruning, leader of the Catholic Centre Party. Bruning was told by the President that he could run the country by Presidential decree which meant he did not have to rely on the Reichstag. This simple act marked the end of democratic rule in Germany. April 1930

The trade unions in Saxony declare a strike. Otto Strasser backed the strike and used his paper in Berlin ‘Arbeitsblatt’ to promote the strike which caused a backlash from Hitler as Hitler was opposed to the strike.

26 April 1930

Hitler calls a party leadership meeting in Munich to discuss how to deal with his closet rival, Gregor Strasser and his followers within the party. At the meeting gives the Strasser’s an ultimatum, he had to finish with his newspapers or he would be fired from his post as Organisation Leader, after which he ripped into the Strasser political ideas and policies and then demanding that they and their supporters toe the line as directed from Hitler himself. At this meeting Hitler appoints Joseph Goebbels as Reich Propaganda Fuehrer.

21 May 1930

In Germany, Otto Strasser is requested to attend a meeting with Hitler at his hotel in Berlin, to discuss his support for the strikers.

26 May 1930

The International Olympic Committee in Paris recommends Berlin be the host for the 1936 games.

12 June 1930

In Germany, Max Schmeling beats the American Jack Sharkey for the heavyweight boxing championship of the world.

23 June 1930

In London, Neville Chamberlain becomes Chairman of the Conservative Party.

End of June 1930

Hitler instructs Goebbels, as Gauleiter of Berlin, to expel Otto Strasser and his supporters from the Party.

01 July 1930

Last of the French troops leave the Rhineland.

16 July 1930

In Germany, Otto Strasser and his supporters are expelled from the NSDAP.

18 July 1930

The German Reich President dissolves the Reichstag. The new elections are to be held on 14 September 1930.

16 July 1930

The German President von Hindenburg uses a Presidential decree to pass the German budget after the Reichstag refused to pass it.

14 September 1930

German elections held for the Reichstag. The NSDAP win 107 seats (almost 9 times their previous number). In Berlin the Nazis capture 395,000 votes, whereas two years previous the Nazis could only muster a paltry 39,000. The Nazi Party has now become a formidable political machine, making them the third strongest party in the Reichstag.

25 September 1930

Hitler denounces the Versailles Treaty and promises to build a large conscript army if ever he wins power.

06 October 1930

Hitler meets with the German Chancellor Heinrich Bruning in Berlin.

13 October 19300

Hermann Goering alongside 106 other Nazi Reichstag members in defiance of a ban wears the uniform of the SA in the Reichstag chamber whilst SA men demonstrated outside the building.

12 November 1930

Ernst Rohm, now back in Germany meets Joseph Goebbels for the first time in the Nazi Party’s new headquarter, the Brown House.

01 December 1930

Heinrich Himmler announces that the SS are now independent from the SA.

12 December 1930

French troops leave the Saar. (Check year 30 or 31)

1931 January 1931

The National Socialist Factory Cell Organisation (NSBO) is accepted as a fully organ of the Party.

05 January 1931

Ernst Rohm takes over as SA chief.

10 February 1931

Joseph Goebbels persuades the NSDAP members of the Reichstag to walk out off the chamber in protest at government plans to limit abuses of parliamentary immunity. Goebbels needed the immunity to prevent himself being sued in a court in law due to some of his controversial speeches prior to his election to the Reichstag.

01 March 1931

Albert Speer joins the NSDAP. Membership number: 474,481.

28 March 1931

President von Hindenburg, in an attempt to quash political violence, issues an emergency decree, stating that all political meetings and gatherings be registered and all posters and pamphlets be

censored. April 1931

Reinhard Heydrich is dishonourably dismissed from the German navy on charges of impropriety.

01 June 1931

Reinhard Heydrich joins the NSDAP.

10 August 1931

Reinhard Heydrich becomes director of the newly formed Ic section of the SS. The Ic was the SS’s attempt at establishing a counter-espionage unit.

18 September 1931

Hitler’s half-sister, Angela’s daughter Geli, whom was 23 years old and totally under Hitler’s will commits suicide in her room within Hitler’s apartment in Prinzeregentenplatz in Munich after Hitler leaves to attend a meeting in Hamburg.

October 1931

Karl Wolf joins the SS.

04 October 1931

Goering receives an urgent telegram from Hitler asking him to return to Berlin at once as events have started to move swiftly in the Nazis favour. The economic situation in Germany was becoming worse day-by-day, especially has two major banks had collapsed and the rise in unemployed had reached over 5 million. Politicians close to the President started to look at the Nazis for answers and started to apply pressure for the aging President to do the same.

10 October 1931

Hitler meets President von Hindenburg after being persuaded to meet him to ask his help to form a new government. The meeting was a total failure. Hitler suffering a bout of nerves launched into one of his famous monologues which did not impress the aging President one little bit. unimpressed and bored with Hitler, Hindenburg abruptly brings the meeting to a close stating to Schleicher that Hitler could never be considered as the next Chancellor of Germany, Minister of Posts maybe, but never Chancellor.

November 1931

In Germany, the Frankfurt police come into possession of secret draft documents, known as the Boxheim Papers, which were drafted by local Nazi leaders in Hesse, which set out preparations for a Nazi coup if a Communist rising occurred. The papers included decrees for the immediate execution of anyone resisting, refusing to co-operate with the Nazis or found in possession of firearms. Hitler claimed to have no knowledge of these sensational documents.

01 December 1931

Reinhard Heydrich is promoted SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer (captain)

December 1931

Reinhard Heydrich marries Lina von Osten.

19 December 1931

Joseph Goebbels marries Magda Quandt in Goldenbow, Mecklenburg. Goebbels best man on the

day is Adolf Hitler himself. 31 December 1931

The SS Race Office is set up to maintain the racial and ideological purity of the SS by Heinrich Himmler.

1932

January 1932

Reinhard Heydrich is promoted to SS-Sturmbannfuhrer (major).

05 January 1932

Hitler receives a telegram from General Groener, who was Germanys Defence Minister and Acting Minister of the Interior, asking him to attend an urgent meeting in Berlin. Hitler believing that his time had come exclaims ‘Now I have them in my pocket! They have recognised that they have to negotiate with me’.

06 January 1932

Hitler meets with General Wilhelm Groener, Acting Interior Minister as well as Defence Minister, and Otto Meissner, Hindenburg’s State Secretary in Berlin.

07 January 1932

The German Deputy Police Commissioner Bernhard Weiss imposes another 7 day ban on Goebbels newspaper Der Angriff after the paper insulted the Jewish faith.

09 January 1931

Germany defaults of her war reparation payments.

12 January 1932

Hitler rejects Chancellor Burning’s plan to extend the President’s term of office, but he does offer the President his support if he would sack Chancellor Bruning and call new elections to the Reichstag as well as the Prussian Landtag. President von Hindenburg rejects Hitler’s offer.

27 January 1932

Hitler makes a speech to a group of industrialist at the Industry Club in Dusseldorf. In his speech Hitler reassured his audience that he and his party would protect their interests, especially against the communist menace. After the speech the industrialists gave Hitler a standing ovation and a few days later, the party received large financial donations from a large group of industrialists.

15 February 1932

President von Hindenburg announces that he will stand for the Presidential office again and with the date of the election set for 13 March 1932 by the Presidential Commission.

February 1932

Adolf Hitler is persuaded by Joseph Goebbels to stand against President von Hindenburg in

the forthcoming Presidential elections, but before he could stand Hitler first had to attain German citizenship. 22 February 1932

Joseph Goebbels announces to a packed party members meeting in the Berlin Sportpalast of Hitler’s candidacy for Reich President.

26 February 1932

Adolf Hitler swears his oath of allegiance and becomes a German citizen.

13 March 1932

Presidential elections take place in Germany. Hitler decides to stay in Munich for the results. Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg polls 18,651,497 (40.6 %) votes, Adolf Hitler gains an impressive 11,339,446 (30.1 %) with the communist leader Ernst Thalmann accumulating 4,983,341 and Theodor Duesterberg of the DNVP only managing a mere 2,557,729 votes. With Hindenburg just missing the absolute majority needed to return him to the Presidential palace another Presidential election was called.

Hindenburg regarded the results as

insulting. The little ‘Bohemian corporal’ (Hitler) had forced him into a rerun. The 10 April 1932 is set for the new election date. Chancellor Bruning, in an attempt to hinder the Nazis decreed that no electioneering for the Presidential election could take place until 04 April 1932.

17 March 1932

The police raid the SA office in Berlin finding documents indicating a possible coup d’état if Hitler was to win the election. This was a huge embarrassment to Hitler, if it could be proved that he knew about the plot, the police could arrest him and charge him with high treason The race was on to calm things down. Ernst Rohm reassured Schleicher whilst Goering called a press conference at the Kaiserhof where he made it clear that the NSDAP would stay within the confines of legality and that no coup d’état was planned.

April 1932

Because of an escalation of violence, The German government placed a ban on the wearing of political uniform such as the SA’s and SS’s. Though both organisations openly flaunted the ban.

April 1932

Joseph Goebbels, borrowing a small Junkers passenger plane from the National Socialist Flying Corps, to fly Hitler from venue-to-venue. He termed the saying ‘the Fuhrer over Germany’ for propaganda purposes.

10 April 1932

The second Presidential elections take place in Germany with von Hindenburg taking 53 per cent of the total votes cast (19,359,983 votes) whilst Hitler’s share of the vote increased to 13,418,547 (37 %) up by 2 million, with the communist leader Ernst Thalmann losing over a million. Hindenburg is returned to office as President of Germany.

April 1932

The Prussian Landtag elections are held with the NSDAP taking 36.3 per cent of the votes which saw their number of seats rise from 6 to 162, making them the largest party in the Landtag, though this still did not give them an overall majority and in turn they could not form a government. Elections also took place in Anhalt, Bavaria, Hamburg and Wurttemberg in which the NSDAP did extremely well but it was in Anhalt that they had their first real taste of success, here they won 40.9 per cent of the votes which enabled them to appoint their first Minister-President.

12 May 1932

Outside the Chamber in the German Reichstag, 4 NSDAP Reichstag members assaulted a journalist whom had published letters written by Ernst Rohm detailing his homosexual tendencies’.

The 4 men refused to be expelled from the chamber as their colleagues in the

Reichstag chamber started a quarrel with other the members. After a while the police had to be called in. 25 May 1932

Joseph Goebbels, whom had gained a seat in the Prussian Landtag to gain extra immunity started a fight with his 162 Nazi members against 80 communist members. Their missiles were chairs and inkpots. The aim of the fight was to destabilise the Landtag.

29 May 1932

The NSDAP win their first majority in the Landtag elections in Oldenburg. Out of 46 seats they take control of 24.

April 1932

The bans that were imposed on the SA and SS, as well as other organisations are lifted by the German Chancellor.

01 April 1932

Adolf Karl Eichmann joins the NSDAP.

01 May 1932

Joachim von Ribbentrop joins the NSDAP as member 1,199,927.

May/April 1932

Hindenburg sacks his chancellor, Heinrich Bruning with plans to promote Franz von Papen and then summons Hitler and Goring and asks them if they will honour the agreement that they made with von Schleicher to support a new government he was about to form. In return Hindenburg promised to lift the bans that were currently in place against the SA and SS and the dissolution of parliament. Hitler promised the aging president that would abide by his promise.

June 1932

With the ban on the SA still in place, Joseph Goebbels leads a group of uniformed SA men to a large and busy restaurant on the Potsdamer Strasse, hoping that the police would attempt to arrest them. However the police refused to take the bait and did nothing.

02 June 1932

In Germany von Papen is named as the new Chancellor.

04 June 1932

The German Reichstag is dissolved.

13 June 1932

Hitler meets with the Chancellor von Papen and demands that he stop dragging his feet and lifts the bans that had been imposed on his movement.

16 June 1932

Franz von Papen, the German Chancellor finally lifts the bans that had been imposed on the SA. With the ban lifted the Brownshirts (SA) went looking to antagonise local communist groups. Violent pitched battles spread across Germany.

16 June-09 July 1932

The Lausanne Conference agrees to end German war reparations.

17 July 1932

Escorted by police the SA stage a march through a staunch communist area of Hamburg as a way pick a fight with them. The communists took the bait and one of the bloodiest street battles takes place. At least 19 people died and 285 wounded as gunfire ruled the streets. In response von Papen banned all further demonstrations and parades until after the forthcoming elections.

18 July 1932

Joseph Goebbels speaks on Radio for the first time.

End July 1932

Reinhard Heydrich is promoted to SS-Standartenfuhrer (full colonel).

31 July 1932

The NSDAP wins 230 seats in the Reichstag elections in Germany capturing 13,745,000 (37.3%) votes. Though again they fail to gain the majority in the Reichstag which in itself was a disappointment to the Nazi leadership.

04 August 1932

At Furstenberg army base near Berlin, Hitler secretly meets the German Defence Minister Schleicher to discuss his demands in relation to any new government being formed. He demands for himself the Chancellors office as well as Minister-President of Prussia, the Interior Minister’s job for Wilhelm Frick, Goering to be awarded the Aviation Ministers post, Goebbels is to be made a minister for a new ministry for the Education of the People, the Labour Ministry is to go to Gregor Strasser and Schleicher would remain Defence Minister.

Later Hitler would reshuffle

his would-be-cabinet…Instead of the Labour Ministry, Strasser would be awarded the Interior Ministries of Prussia and Germany itself, whilst Wilhelm Frick would be State Secretary in the Reich Chancellery.

09 August 1932

Five SA men murder a communist miner in front of his mother in the town of Potempa

Later at their trial the SA men are sentenced to death. While awaiting their sentence to be carried out the SA leader Ernst Rohm visits them in prison whilst Goebbels lauds them as martyrs in hi newspaper Der Angriff. 13 August 1932

Hitler is offered the vice-chancellorship under von Papen but his sights are set much higher and refuses the post.

22 August 1932

Hitler sends a telegram to the 5 SA men condemned to death for murdering a communist miner on the 9th August 193, stating his support for them and promising to do all he can to help them. In the eyes of a lot of ordinary Germans, Hitler it seems support gangsterism and their support for the Nazis begin to waiver.

24 August 1932

The 5 SA men who murdered a communist miner on the 9th August 1932 have their death sentences commuted.

30 August 1932

Herman Goering, one of the Nazis who won a seat in Germany’s last elections is elected as President of the Reichstag.

01 September 1932

Joseph Goebbels becomes a father with the birth of his daughter Helga.

12 September 1932

At the first working session of the Reichstag turns farcical when the Nazis and communist members vote against von Papen’s government in a motion of no confidence. von Papen had tried to use the Presidential emergency decree to dissolve the parliament before the vote could be held but Goering as Reichstag President ignored Papen and the decree.

November 1932

Eva Braun, attempts suicide by trying to shoot herself. She is found with a bullet in her neck.

06 November 1932

Reichstag elections are held in Germany with the Nazis winning 11,737,000 down over 2 million from the last Reichstag elections, which in turn reduced the number of seats they have from 230 to 196. Though the NSDAP still remained the largest party in the Reichstag. Their closest rivals, the Social Democrats polled 7,248,000 votes a drop over 3 quarters-of-a-million. The DNVP were the real winners as they increased their seats from 37 to 52.

17 November 1932

Whilst trying to woe Mussolini in Rome, Goering receives an urgent message from Hitler stating that he must return at once as von Papen’s government had resigned and Hitler had been summoned by Hindenburg.

19 November 1932

Hitler accompanied by Goring meets Hindenburg. At the meeting the President asks Hitler about his Party’s policies after which Hindenburg states that he would like to see Hitler taking part in a new government and was asked to go away and think about it further. .

24 November 1932

After much deliberation Hitler decides not to accept Hindenburg’s offer to be part of the government believing that he can achieve real power if he bides his time.

02 December 1932

President von Hindenburg selects his Defence Minister Schleicher as Chancellor thus replacing von Papen. One of the first things Schleicher as Chancellor was to attempt to split the NSDAP by offering Hitler’s main rival within the party, Gregor Strasser, the offices of Vice-Chancellor and Minister-President of Prussia. Strasser though tempted with the offer decided to turn it down, instead he tried in vain get Hitler to accept a share of power in the new government and even threatening to break away and form his own party if Hitler still refused. After Hitler held firm Strasser chose to resign from the party.

1933 1933

Diarist Anne Frank, along with the rest of her family flees Germany.

January 1933

German statisticians report that there around 525,000 people who regard themselves as full Jews living in the country. These Jews make up less than one per cent of the of the population and that number has been in decline since the Nazis gained power. Though the German Christian movement, a new religious organisation that strives to unite Christianity and Nazism, noted that the published figures missed 300,000 more Jews who did not practise their faith, and who the statisticians had not counted.

January 1933

In the German Reichstag chaos reigns as the Nazi delegates stir up trouble. New elections are called to settle things.

04 January 1933

Hitler, accompanied by Rudolf Hess, Heinrich Himmler and the businessman Wilhelm Keppler meet the ex-Chancellor von Papen at the home of Baron Kurt von Schroder, a banker from Cologne. Hitler, whom thought that this was to be a secret meeting, was amazed when von Papen arrived at the front door, with a journalist taking photographs, whereas Hitler and his group had sneaked in through the back. At this meeting it had been suggested that there could be a Papen-Hitler government. But when the Tagliche Rundschau newspaper indicated that Papen was planning to create a Hitler government, Papen and Hitler denied this and stated that they were just debating the possibility of creating a national front for political unity.

18 January 1933

Hitler along with Ernst Rohm, Heinrich Himmler agrees to meet von Papen again, but this time the meeting will take place in the registered wine merchant Joachim von Ribbentrop house. At this meeting Hitler demands nothing short of the Chancellorship for himself, when Papen objected claiming that his influence with Hindenburg could not stretch that far, Hitler called off the meeting though he allowed Ribbentrop to continue passing messages to-and-fro for the next couple of days.

22 January 1933

Hitler meets with Oskar Hindenburg, the Presidents son, Otto Meissner, the State Secretary and von Papen. This time Goring was in the company of Goering and Frick, though Goering arrived arrived at the meeting late.

Hitler first had a private chat with Oskar Hindenburg as he knew that

he had been opposed to Hitler in the past. Hitler wanted to woo Oskar into taking his side. The meeting progressed and no objection arose about Hitler becoming Chancellor, though von Papen informed Hitler that the President still did not want him as his Chancellor, but Hitler pointed that he would accept a coalition cabinet, with him as Chancellor and with Wilhelm Frick as Minister of the Interior and Hermann Goering as Minister without Portfolio.

Late January 1933

The German Chancellor Schleicher on hearing about the secret meeting between Hitler, von Papen, Meissner and Hindenburg’s son Otto asks President Hindenburg to dissolve the Reichstag and to postpone the Reichstag elections indefinitely and allow him to rule by Presidential decree. Hindenburg, knowing that this would make Schleicher virtual dictator of Germany refused the request.

28 January 1933

The German Chancellor realizing that his time is up, turns to President von Hindenburg and offers his resignation. Hindenburg asks von Papen to ask Adolf Hitler to form a cabinet. Hindenburg however insists that von Papen be made vice-Chancellor and that he as President appoint his governments Foreign and Defence Ministers. Baron Konstantin von Neurath to be Foreign Minister while General Werner von Blomberg is Defence Minister. Papen also insisted that he should remain Reich Commissioner for Prussia instead of handing it over to Hitler as Chancellor. At first Hitler refused Papen’s demand but Goering and Frick managed to persuade him in return Hitler could give Frick the Reich Interior Ministry and Goring the Prussian Interior Ministry, if accepted, Goering would become Papen’s deputy in Prussia. Papen, unaware of what was really being asked for agreed. The German police forces were securely in the hands of the Nazi Party, and in time they would exploit this power to its full.

29 January 1933

Schleicher, on hearing rumours that President von Hindenburg was about to appoint the Chancellorship to von Papen asked Hitler to join him in by linking the army and the Nazi Party

together and ousting President von Hindenburg and von Papen and then securing power for themselves in a military dictatorship. But with power being placed legally in his hands, Hitler ignored Schleicher’s offer. Later that night Schleicher sent a messenger to Goebbels flat, where a group of leading Nazis where celebrating the news that Hitler was about to be made Chancellor, with the news that Hindenburg was about to appoint von Papen cabinet, but no Papen cabinet was appointed that night. 30 January 1933

At 5am, Oskar Hindenburg, the son of the President meets General Werner von Blomberg as he gets off the train in Berlin and whisks him away to be sworn in as Defence Minister. Schleicher had sent one of his own men to intercept Blomberg before he could be sworn into office but his man could not prevent Oskar Hindenburg getting to the General first. Hindenburg ordered his new Defence Minister to ensure that Schleicher and the army stay out of politics. At this stage Hindenburg had no idea that he new Defence Minister was a Nazi convert. At around 10.30 am Hitler with his cabinet gathered in the ex-Chancellors apartment and then took a slow stroll to the Chancellery where the President had been staying whilst the Presidential Palace was being refurbished. At midday, an hour late, Hitler and his cabinet stood in front of the President to be sworn into their respective offices. Hitler was now Chancellor of Germany.

February 1933

Joachim von Ribbentrop approaches Papen and pleads with him to appoint him State Secretary in the Foreign Ministry for his reward in brokering the agreement with Hitler. Papen ignored his pleas.

04 or 08 February 1933

President von Hindenburg signs the ‘Decree for the Protection of the German People, the act which was intended to protect the public from ‘acts of terror’ from communists, was used by Hitler as a tool to suppress opposition especially for the forthcoming elections. It allowed the banning of political meetings and it gave the authorities (Now under Nazi control) the right to arrest and imprison people on mere suspicion and hold them in ‘protective custody’ for up to three months. It also gave them the perfect tool to censure the press. It marked the end of civil liberties in Germany.

10 February 1933

Hitler uses the airwaves for the first time in a speech to the nation from the Sportpalast in Berlin.

17 February 1933

Hermann Goering issues a directive to the Police stating that they should not interfere with the activities of either the SA or SS when they are dealing with suspected enemies of the state, in fact Goering orders them to support them when need to do so.

22 February 1933

Herman Goering orders that 50,000 SA men be recruited as auxiliary policemen in preparation of of any attempt of a communist coup.

27 February 1933

In Germany, the Reichstag is set on fire and the authorities arrest a 24 year old communist brick layer, Marinus van der Lubbe at the scene.

28 February 1933

President von Hindenburg gives Hitler the emergency decree that he had been pushing for.

February/March 1933

Hermann Goering is introduced to a recently new invention. It was a Swiss system and it enabled the tapping and recording of telephone conversations on a large scale. As head of the Gestapo, Goering enthusiastically adopts the system to spy on rivals as well as enemies of the state.

05 March 1933

In the new elections held in Germany for the Reichstag, With over 17 million Germans voting for Hitler’s NSDAP they snatch 288 out of 647 Reichstag seats and with the help of the DNVPs support (they won 3 million seats which gave them 52 seats in the Reichstag) Hitler was able to set up a coalition government.

09 March 1933

Heinrich Himmler calls Reinhard Heydrich back to Munich as head of Political Department VI of the Munich Police.

09 March 1933

Joseph Goebbels lets the SA loose on Berlin’s Jewish population. Groups of between 5 and 30 men rampage the streets in search of Jews to beat up.

10/11 March 1933

Hitler manages to persuade President von Hindenburg to declare the Swastika the official emblem of Germany.

11 or 13 March 1933

Joseph Goebbels is made Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Goebbels uses all the tools of his trade in incite racial hatred.

16 March 1933

Joseph Goebbels holds his first press conference as Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. At the conference Goebbels makes it clear that any newspaper that did not toe the Nazi line would be in for serious trouble.

17 March 1933

Formation of Liebstandarte-SS Adolf Hitler by Josef (Sepp) Dietrich as a personal body guard unit for the Fuhrer. This body of men will soon be expanded under Himmler’s watchful eye and his entire SS will become known as the Black Order.

21 March 1933

Himmler now police president of Munich announces the opening of the first of the concentration camps in Germany. Dachau will be used to hold political prisoners. Communists are forbidden to

take their seats in the new Reichstag. Special courts are also established by decree to try political enemies. At this stage of Hitler’s hold on power, political adversaries are seen as more of a threat to the regime than Jews or Gays, so the need to remove them from society was greater. March 1933

The Nazis open their first woman’s concentration camp at Gottezell.

23 March 1933

The German Reichstag passes the ‘Act for the Removal of Distress from People and Reich (the Enabling Act). Thus given Hitler dictatorial like powers for the next four years.

24 March 1933

Enabling Act (Law to Remove Distress of the People and State) is adopted by the Reichstag. This act provides Hitler with a constitutional foundation for his dictatorship.

26 March 1933

Heinrich Himmler is made Acting Police President of Nuremberg and Furth.

01 April 1933

Himmler is appointed political police commander for the whole of Bavaria and is given full responsibility for the country’s concentration camps.

01 April 1933

Jewish shops in Berlin are boycotted as SA men are posted outside Jewish owned shops and paint anti-Jewish slogans on the shop windows even though most of the Jewish owned shops are closed due to the Jewish Sabbath.

April 1933

Himmler appoints Theodor Eicke as Inspector of concentration Camps. Eicke develops a code of conduct for the guards and establish a detailed set of rules as how to govern life and death within the camps. The Death Head brigades are now a reality.

07 April 1933

Law for the Restoration of a Professional Civil Service is adopted by the German Cabinet. This act allows the removal of Jews from the civil service, which in essence means Jews working within the police forces, universities and schools are to be dismissed. Jews also working in the arts and press, including free Professional s are also to be removed. A Law for the Co-ordination (Gleichschaltung) of the State within the Reich is also adopted, thus ending Germany’s federal system. The Cabinet also agree to make May Day a national holiday.

21 April 1933

In Germany, Rudolf Hess is named Deputy Fuhrer for Party Affairs.

21 April 1933

In Germany, Jewish ritual slaughter is banned.

25 April 1933

Hitler’s government introduces a ‘Numbers Clause’, which is aimed at restricting the percentage (about 1½ per cent of the Aryans total enrolled) of Jewish students who attend schools and universities.

25 April 1933

Joseph Goebbels returns to his home town of Rheydt where he receives the freedom of the city.

May 1933

Joachim von Ribbentrop is given the rank of SS-Standartenfuhrer from Himmler.

May 1933

The Soviet Union and Nazi Germany sign an extension to the Treaty of Berlin. The treaty represented friendship and neutrality.

02 May 1933

Hitler’s government bans trade unions in Germany and replaces it with a Nazi-orientated Labour movement.

10 May 1933

The burning of books takes place all around Germany. Books written by Jews and other so-called undesirables are thrown into the flames of bonfires which were organised by Nazi students.

14 May 1933

Joseph Goebbels wife Magda broadcasts the nations the first Mothers Day address.

28 May 1928

The NSDAP gain a majority in the free elections held in the free city of Danzig.

June 1933

In Prussia, Hermann Goering appoints Heinrich Himmler ministerial commissioner for auxiliary police in the Gestapo office.

22 June 1933

Hitler has the German Social Democratic Party banned and takes over all their assets.

26 June 1933

Alfred Hugenberg a member of Hitler’s coalition cabinet and a DNVP member resigns from the government. Germany is now in essence a one-party state.

05 July 1933

Because of Nazi pressure, The German Centre Party dissolves itself.

08 or20 July 1933

A Concordat between Nazi Germany and the Vatican is signed in Rome. This agreement puts a ban on the Catholic clergy from being actively involved in politics within Germany. In return, the Nazis would leave the Catholics church alone.

14 July 1933

In Germany, the Nazi government introduce a Sterilisation Law which will allow doctors to force German citizens with congenital disabilities (as well as a range of other hereditary diseases) to be sterilised.

14 July 1933

Germany officially becomes a one-party state after Hitler’s government introduces ‘The Law Against the New Formation of Parties’

14 July 1933

In Germany, the Nazi government introduces a De-naturalization Law)

02 August 1933

Hermann Goering and Wilhelm Frick disband the SA auxiliary police force.

20 August 1933

The American Jewish Congress declare a boycott against Nazi Germany.

02 September 1933

Italy and Germany sign a pact of friendship.

24 September 1933

Joseph Goebbels and the Foreign Minister Neurath leave for Geneva to represent Germany at the League of Nations.

25 August 1933

Ha’avara agreement is signed (Get Info)

13 September 1933

In German schools, the Nazis introduce Race Theory into the curriculum.

29 September 1933

German Jews are banned from owning land and from participating in all public activities.

14-19 October 1933

Germany withdraws from the League of Nations. Hitler informs the nation of his decision to leave the League by announcement on radio.

November 1933

The trial of Marinus van der Lubbe along with the communist leader Ernst Torgler and three Bulgarian members of the Communist International (Comintern). Goering made a complete fool of himself at the trial. The Judges after hearing all the evidence found only van der Lubbe guilty of the Reichstag fire.

12 November 1933

Elections are held in Germany alongside a referendum on the withdrawal from the League of Nations with 95.1 per cent approved Germanys withdrawal, while 92.1 per cent voted for the single Nazi list.

30 November 1933

Goring establishes autonomy of the Geheime Staatpolizei (Gestapo) in Prussia and brings it under his control as Prime Minister.

December 1933

Goering signs a contract on behalf of the government with the German company IG Farben for the manufacture of synthetic fuel from coal.

IG Farben would gain notoriety by establishing

a factory at Auschwitz-Birkenau in Poland during the war and using inmates as slave labour.

01 December 1933

Hitler appoints the leader of the SA, Ernst Rohm and Rudolf Hess to his cabinet as ministers without portfolios.

05 December 1933

A decree is passed in Germany which forces doctors to inform on their patients who have hereditary diseases or are chronic alcoholics.

1934 January 1934

Hitler’s chief architect Paul Ludwig Troost whom had rebuilt the Nazi’s Brown House in Munich dies. His successor is Albert Speer.

January 1934

Hitler summons Rudolf Diels, who is head of the Prussian Gestapo, and orders him to gather any incriminating evidence on Ernst Rohm.

26 January 1934

Germany and Poland sign a non-aggression and friendship pact.

27 January 1934

The French government collapses after revelations of corruption (Stavisky Affair).

30 January 1934

The Nazi government sets forth the ‘Law for the Reconstruction of the Reich’ which ended local government assemblies, transferring all sovereign rights to the Reich government.

01 February 1934

Without Hitler’s knowledge or approval, Ernst Rohm sends the Defence Minister a Cabinet memorandum demanding that the defence of the country should be given over to the SA.

6-7 February 1934

Right wing demonstrations in France force Daladier’s government to resign.

April 1934

Hitler asks Neurath to give von Ribbentrop a job with a title in an effort to appease him. Neurath creates the post of Special Commissioner to the Reich Government for Disarmament Questions thus given him the rank of Ambassador and answerable to the Foreign Minister.

20 April 1934

Himmler is made head of the Prussian Gestapo. He soon establishes the Gestapo in all German states.

24 April 1934

The Peoples Court is established in Berlin to try all cases of treason.

May 1934

The ‘Barmen Declaratiion’ is signed by leading Protestant clergy, namely, Martin Niemoeller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, with the leading Lutheran theologian Karl Barth. The declaration attacks

the Nazi manipulation of the church in Germany. June 1934

Rudolf Hoess, the future commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, is invited to give up his farming career and join the SS as a full time member. After joining he is sent to the concentration camp at Dachau as a camp guard.

June 1934

Himmler and Goering gather evidence of an alleged plot by Ernst Rohm and his SA against Hitler’s regime. Rohm according to the evidence, stated that he would merge the army, SS and the SA under a single command to be held by Rohm himself. Hitler would remain Chancellor. The evidence of a Rohm coup was a fake.

14-15 June 1934

Hitler meets Mussolini in Venice.

25 June 1934

The Defence Minister Blomberg and the Interior Minister Fritsch ordered the army on standby after alarming reports that the SA were planning a coup.

June 1934

Hitler, who is now believing that the SA maybe planning a coup, telephones Ernst Rohm’s adjutant and orders that all SA Obergruppenfuhrer’s, Gruppenfuhrers attend a meeting with him at Bad Wiesse late on the morning of 30th June. Hitler’s plan was simple, with all the high ranking SA leaders in one place; so that it would be easier to arrest them.

29-30 June 1934

Night of the Long Knives. Many leaders of the SA are arrested on Hitler’s orders. Hitler himself attends the arrest of his old friend Ernst Rohm, with pistol in his hand Hitler enters Rohm’s room at 6.30am. Hitler screams at Rohm accusing him of being a traitor and that he was under arrest. They were put into cells of Stadelheim Prison to await their fate. By mid morning there was some 200 SA men behind locked doors. The round up continued throughout the Reich and the Nazi Leadership took this time to settle old scores especially Goering who had Gregor Strasser arrested and shot along with several hundred SA men along with their leader Rohm. The men behind the killing were Himmler’s SS. This was to be the new beginning of the SS and from now on their development would be written in blood.

01 July 1934

Hitler calls an end to the killing that had started on the 30th June with the Night of the Long Knives.

20 July 1934

The SS are declared an independent arm of the Nazi movement, with its leader answerable only to Hitler.

25 July 1934

The Austrian Nazi’s attempt a coup in Vienna in which the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss is assassinated.

27 July 1934

Heinrich Himmler. Reichsfuhrer of the SS leases the ruined castle of Wewelsburg with the aim of making it the seat of his SS order.

02 August 1934

The aged German President von Hindenburg dies leaving Hitler to snatch the Presidency for himself. All member of the armed forces were now obliged to take an new oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. The oath had been formulated by the Defence Minister Blomberg and Reichenau

07 August 1934

A Hitler amnesty allows some prisoners to be released from the concentration camps.

10 August 1934

Hitler authorises the release of more prisoners within the concentration camps and orders Himmler to close some down.

19 August 1934

Adolf Hitler is confirmed as President as well as Chancellor of Germany as well as making himself head of the German Armed Forces though he is disappointed at the referendum asking the people to support his new position. 89.9 per cent of the population voted for Hitler out of 95 per cent of the population that went to the polls. Nearly 5 million had opposed him.

18 September 1934

The Soviet Union joins the League of Nations.

01 October 1934

A general strike is held in Spain, which escalates into rebellion in the cities of Madrid, Catalonia and Asturias.

07 December 1934

Hitler appoints Hermann Goering his deputy and his successor.

End of October 1934

The Gestapo in Berlin sets up a special branch to fight homosexuality.

19 December 1934

Japan renounces the Washington and London Naval Treaties.

20 December 1934

A new law is set up which allows German courts to try people accused of criticising the government and the Nazi Party itself.

1935 January 1935

Dr Friedrich Wilhelm Hack, an intermediary of von Ribbentrop, puts out feelers to the

Japanese in connection with an alliance against communism. 01 January 1935

The administration for justice in Germany is made uniform across Germany and the Ministries of justice of the individual states are brought under central control.

13 January 1935

Under the auspices of the League of Nations, the Saar votes overwhelmingly to return to Germany.

26 January 1935

In Germany, Goring becomes Commander-in-Chief for the newly formed Luftwaffe.

February 1935

The Work Book (Arbeitbuch) is introduced by law within the German Reich. The Work Book is an employment record of each worker; it is given to an employer at the beginning of employment and is returned at the end of employment. The labour Office kept a central Registry of Works Books. Anyone caught entering false information in the books were subject To punishment.

01 March 1935

The Saar is officially returned to Germany.

10 March 1935

In Germany, Hermann Goering officially announces the existence of the Luftwaffe.

16 March 1935

Hitler breaks the Versailles Treaty and introduces conscription in Germany and accelerates rearmament.

April 1935

The German Ministry of the Interior records that there is around 750,000 Jewish-Germans living within Germany’s borders. This figure had been deliberately inflated for propaganda purposes.

10 April 1935

Hermann Goering marries Emmy Sonnemann.

11-14 April 1935

Britain, France and Italy meet to discuss ways to counter Hitler’s militant Germany (Stresa Conference)

02 May 1935

The Franco-Soviet Mutual Assistance Pact is signed.

28 May 1935

Eva Braun attempts suicide for the second time by using sleeping pills.

31 May 1935

Under new laws in Germany, the armed forces are prohibited from enlisting Jews.

04 June 1935

In London the Naval Conference opens. It was at this conference that von Ribbentrop from Germany issued an ultimatum to the British. They ultimatum demanded that Britain allow

Germany a navy of 35 per cent of the size of Britain’s own navy otherwise the Germans conference would withdraw from the conference.

Britain agree to Ribbentrop’s demand

believing that this was the best way of limiting the German navy. With the signing of the Anglo-German Naval Agreement Hitler now believed that he could continue to rebuild the German military machine without any real threat from the Allied governments. When Ribbentrop returned to Berlin Hitler presented him with a signed photograph of them together whilst Himmler promoted him to SS-Brigadefuhrer (Brigadier-General). 18 June 1935

The Anglo-German Naval Agreement is signed.

20 June 1935

Hitler gives Himmler the nod to expand the concentration camp system.

20 August 1935

At the Seventh World Congress of Communist International calls for ant anti-Fascist front to be set up to combat the increasing threat from Fascism.

31 August 1935

In America, President Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act.

15 September 1935

The Reichstag passes laws to prevent Jews from having sexual relations with Germans or people with similar blood and bars Jews from being citizens of the Reich. These new laws are known simply as the Nuremberg Laws.

28 September 1935

Hitler’s government imposes control over all German Protestant Churches.

03 October 1935

Italian troops invade Abyssinia (Ethiopia). Confirm date either 03 or 30

18 October 1935

Himmler obtains Hitler’s support to broaden the powers of the police. The Jews being the main target.

19 October 1935

The League of Nations vote to impose partial sanctions against Italy after her invasion of Ethiopia.

06 September 1935

Himmler informs the Ministry of Justice, of a Hitler order barring lawyers access to anyone held in protective custody.

23 December 1935

The Italians use mustard gas against the Ethiopians.

1936

February 1936

In Spain the left-wing Popular Front narrowly wins the national elections. The right refuse to accept the victory and with it the threat of civil war heightens.

10 February 1936

A Law in Prussia is adopted which virtually means that the Gestapo are no longer answerable to the courts and in the event of wrongful arrest, no one can sue for damages. The Gestapo are now virtually above the law.

07 March 1936

Hitler launches Operation Winter Garden. 19 infantry battalions supported by a handful of aircraft marches into the demilitarised zone of Germany’s Rhineland unopposed. On hearing the news, the British Prime Minister reacts calmly and sends a message to the French government to enquire what they intend to do about Germany’s blatant breach of the Versailles Treaty. The French government instruct their Commander-in-Chief, general Maurice Gamelin, to initiate ‘energetic action’, without defining what they meant by ‘energetic action’. The general refused to march his troops into Germany but instead sent 13 divisions to the Franco-German border as a show of strength. On hearing that 13 French divisions’ where mustering near Germany’s border, Hitler’s war minister, Werner von Blomberg rushed to inform Hitler. Hitler calmly asked if the French had cross the border into Germany, Blomberg answered that they had not. Hitler decided then to play the waiting games before he made a decision concerning his own troops whom had just crossed into the Rhineland. Hitler’s patience paid off as no French troops crossed into Germany, had they done so, the 19 battalions would have automatically pulled out of the demilitarised zone. Hitler had now effectively remilitarised the demilitarised zone in open defiance of the Versailles Treaty.

15 March 1936

In New York, a massive anti-Nazi rally is held.

April 1936

Rudolf Hoess is made Rapportfuhrer Chief.

01 April 1936

Himmler’s concentration camps are now funded directly from the federal budget.

20 April 1936

Hitler promotes Hermann Goering to Colonel-General, not what Goering wanted, he had coveted for some time the title of Air-Marshal but Hitler had dismissed this stating that it was an un-German title.

05 May 1936

In France, Blum’s Populaire Francais is elected to form the next government.

July 1936

General Francisco Franco, Commander-in-Chief of the army in Spanish Morocco rebels against the elected government and prepares to return to the mainland Spain to overthrow the government in Madrid. Spanish sailors based in North Africa rebelled against their officers after they tried

to get them to ship Franco’s army to Spain. With no means of transport, Franco asks Mussolini Hitler for support.

Hitler allows Goering’s Luftwaffe to organise transportation of Franco’s

troops. Later Hitler would send a Luftwaffe group known as the Condor Legion to fight on Franco’s side against the communists. Mussolini would also eventually assist Franco by supplying him with volunteers and arms. 17 June 1936

Himmler is made Chief of the German police, as well as head of the newly centralised Gestapo.

08 July 1936

The Spanish Civil War begins.

01 August 1936

The Olympic Games begin in Berlin.

September 1936

Rudolf Hoess is promoted to lieutenant and is transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

09 October 1936

The Association of Jewish war veterans in Germany are banned.

18 October 1936

Hitler confirms that Hermann Goering is given charge of the Four-Year Plan. This position gives Goering control over the whole of the German economy.

27 October 1936

Hitler and Mussolini sign the Rome-Berlin Axis Agreement pact.

November 1936

After a three hour meeting with Hitler, the Catholic Archbishop of Munich-Freising, Cardinal Faulhaber is convinced that Germany’s Fuhrer is deeply religious. Faulhaber writes a report later and stated that ‘He recognises Christianity as a builder of Western culture’.

15 November 1936

Goebbels notes in his diary ‘The showdown with Bolshevism is coming. Then we want to be prepared. The army is now completely won over by us. Fuhrer untouchable...Dominance in Europe for us is as good as certain. Just let no chance pass by. Therefore rearm.

25 November 1936

Germany and Japan conclude an Anti-Comintern Pact.

01 December 1936

In Germany all right-wing youth groups are merged with the Hitler Youth (HJ).

1937

January 1937

In Germany, Hitler nominates Albert Speer as the architect that will transform Berlin into an architectural wonder.

January 1937

Adolf Eichmann suggests in a lengthy memorandum that anti-Jewish pogroms is the most effective way to speed up their emigration.

07 January 1937

In Berlin, Adolf Hitler offers a non-intervention pact in the case of the Spanish Civil War as long as other European powers do likewise..

09 January 1937

Mussolini’s government in Rome bans inter-racial marriages in their African colonies.

10 January 1937

Britain bans their citizens from volunteering to fight in the Spanish Civil War. Offenders will receive a two year jail sentence.

17 January 1937

Stalin’s USSR refuses to stop supplying military aid to the Republicans in Spain.

30 January 1937

In Germany Hitler tears up the Treaty of Versailles and at the same time guarantees the neutrality of Belgium and Holland. He also bans Germans from accepting Nobel Prizes.

02 February 1937

The Chamber of Deputies in Paris votes to increase their defence budget to match German military spending.

04 February 1937

The German ambassador in London von Ribbentrop gives the Nazi salute to King George.

16 February 1937

In London, Britain, Germany, Italy, USSR and 23 other countries agrees to stop supplying military aide to Spain.

20 March 1937

Reinhard Heydrich pays a visit to Goebbels at his home in Berlin and a carrying a pastoral letter from the Pope that was to be read to the churches congregation. The letter was an obvious attack on Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Hitler launches a smear campaign against the church and had many members of the clergy arrested in retaliation.

19 April 1937

Hitler states Germany is ready and willing to hold talks on arms reductions.

30 April 1937

Goebbels notes in his diary ‘The Jews must get out of Germany, yes out of the whole Europe. That will still take some time, but it will and must happen. The Fuhrer is firmly decided on it.

25 May 1937

In Italy, Mussolini tells his country’s Jews to uphold Fascism or leave.

06 June 1937

Catholic youths in Munich clash with local Nazis.

20 June 1937

In Germany, the Nazis close all Catholic schools.

22 June 1937

In France, Blum’s Populaire Francais government collapses.

26 June 1937

In Rome, Mussolini states Italy will back Franco in the Spanish Civil War.

27 June 1937

In Berlin, Hitler states that Germany will no longer take part in collective action on the Spanish Civil War.

July 1937

Hermann Goering announces that he is going to build the largest steelworks at Salzgitter, near Brunswick in Lower Saxony next to Germany’s largest ore deposits. The steelworks will be known as Reichswerke AG fur Erzbergbau und Hermann Goring (the Hermann Goring Reich Works for Ore Mining and Iron Smelting) Goering had tried unsuccessfully to get Germany’s steel magnets to build and operate a steelworks using Germany’s low-grade ore, hopefully ending Germany’s reliance on overseas markets. But the businessmen believed it to be too costly an adventure and declined Goering’s invitation.

15 July 1937

Hermann Goering signs a contract with the H.G. Brassert Company of Chicago to design and build furnaces that can handle low-grade ore.

19 July 1937

The Nazis open their art exhibition ‘Degenerate Art’ in Munich

06 August 1937

In London, the British government expel three German journalists.

09 August 1937

In Berlin, the Nazi authorities expel the Times’ correspondent in retaliation for the expulsion of three German journalists from Britain.

13 September 37

In Germany, Jews arrested and held in Protective Custody are told that if they leave Germany for good, they will be freed from prison.

21 October 1937

Himmler declares that any returning Jewish emigrant will be arrested and placed in a concentration camp.

05 November 1937

Hitler meets with his General Staff. They believe the meeting is to sort out raw material issues that have been simmering away for months, however, Hitler informs them of the plans for the occupation of Austria and Czechoslovakia by force in the near future.

06 November 1937

Italy joins Germany and Japan by signing the Anti-Comintern Pact

19 November 1937

Britain’s Lord Halifax meets with Adolf Hitler at Berchtesgaden. The meeting becomes a disaster When Hitler loses his temper and accuses Britain of impeding German Foreign Policy. Herman Goering tries to repair the rift later when Halifax visits him at his Carinhall home.

26 November 1937

In Germany, Hjalmar Schacht, Minister for Economics resigns from his office.

26 November 1937

General von Blomberg, Hitler’s Minister for Defence, marries Erna Gruhn. Hitler and Hermann Goering act as witnesses.

27 November 1937

A German policeman, whilst reading about General von Blomberg’s wedding realises that he recognises the name of the bride. Erna Gruhn had been arrested for posing for pornographic Pictures. The policeman passes this information on to Count von Helldorf, The Berlin Police Chief who subsequently arranges a meeting Blomberg himself to discuss the matter.

11 December 1937

Italy leaves the League of Nations.

1938 1938

Himmler sets up the first of many SS owned companies. The first being the Earth and Stone Works. The labour for these new companies would come from Himmler’s concentration camps.

03 January 1938

The British government announces that all school children are to be issued with gas masks.

04 January 1938

The Rumanian government bans all Jews from employing women under the age of 40.

06 January 1938

Sigmund Freud flees from Nazi persecution in Austria to London.

12 January 1938

Austria and Hungary recognise Franco’s provisional government.

27 January 1938

Hitler accepts the resignation of his Defence Minister Field-Marshal Blomberg

01 February 1938

Italian troops adopt the German-style goosestep.

04 February 1938

Hitler has his last Cabinet meeting where he appoints Joachim von Ribbentrop as Foreign Minister.

10 February 1938

King Carol of Rumania ousts his Premier Octavian Goga and becomes dictator.

14 February 1938

Germany pressurises Austria to release all Nazi members held in their jails and to appoint proNazi ministers.

19 February 1938

Austria informs her Jewish community that they have nothing to fear.

20 February 1938

Germany demands the right of self-determination for Germans living in Austria and Czechoslovakia.

01 March 1938

20,000 Nazis defy the Austrian governments ban and march in the city of Graz.

04 March 1938

Pastor Niemoeller is arrested in Germany and sent to Sachsenhausen Concentration camp.

09 March 1938

Schuschnigg of Austria calls for a referendum on Austrian independence.

11 March 1938

Schuschnigg resigns from office in Vienna and pro-Nazi Arthur-Inquart succeeds him.

11-12 March 1938

German troops march into Austria after being invited by Arthur-Inquart. An estimated 183,000 Austrian Jews now fall under Nazi rule.

13 March 1938

A Reunification Act is decreed in Vienna, which recognises the Anschluss with Germany.

13 March 1938

Hitler is met with cheering crowds as he visits his home town of Linz in Austria.

13 March 1938

In France, Blum’s second government is installed.

14 March 1938

Hitler visits Vienna and is met with a jubilant crowd of supporters.

18 March 1938

Werner Freiherr von Fritsch, the former German army chief is cleared of being involved in a homosexual scandal that had forced his resignation from the German army. The court managed to establish that Fritsch had been the victim of mistaken identity. He was never to regain his old post as army chief.

23 March 1938

In Germany, recognition of Jewish organisations are revoked.

24 March 1938

Hermann Goering visit Austria

26 March 1938

Goring warns Jews to quit Austria.

28 March 1938

Konrad Henlein, the political leader of the Sudetenland Germans visits Hitler where he is given instructions and funding to cause unrest between the Czech authorities and the German Sudeten’s.

06 April 1938

Prominent Jewish figures in Vienna are arrested and sent to Dachau concentration camp.

07 April 1938

The Nazi authorities seize the Rothschild’s Bank and arrest Baron Rothschild.

10 April 1938

In a referendum held in Germany and Austria, on the issue of the Anschluss, 99.73 per cent of votes were in favour of the union. In Germany 99.08 also voted in favour.

16 April 1938

An Anglo-Italian pact is signed in Rome.

18 April 1938

King Carol of Rumania orders the arrest of some 2,000 Nazis for plotting a coup.

26/7 April 1938

Herman Goering issues a decree ordering all Jews who had holdings to the value of 5,000 Reichsmarks or over had to register them with the authorities.

29 April 1938

Anglo-French pact signed, with a promise to defend Czechoslovakia from foreign aggression.

03 May 1938

Hitler, along with Goebbels and Ribbentrop meet Mussolini in Rome whilst Goering remains in Berlin to receive the King of Sweden as Hitler’s Deputy and successor.

04 May 1938

The Vatican recognises Franco’s Spain.

07 May 1938

Hitler and Mussolini pledge a lasting friendship.

14 May 1938

The English national football team give a Nazi salute prior to their match with Germany, which they won 6-3.

20 May 1938

The Czech government orders some 40,000 troops to the Austrian-German border while Hitler receives the draft copy of Operation Green (the invasion of Czechoslovakia) from Wilhelm Keitel

25 May 1938

Hitler makes the small town of Braunau, his birthday a city.

28 May 1938

At an important meeting in Berlin, Hitler tells his audience that he is determined to wipe

Czechoslovakia of the face of the map. 01 June 1938

The new Ju-88 bomber successfully completes it first test flight. The JU-88 would become the most successful German bomber of the next war.

02 June 1938

Hermann Goering’s wife Emmy gives birth to a little girl whom they name Edda after Mussolini’s daughter.

03 June 1938

The Nazis in Germany secure a new law which allows the authorities to confiscate what they regard as degenerate art.

12 June 1938

The Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia makes substantial gains in the national election.

14 June 1938

All Jewish businesses are to be registered separately.

15 June 1938

In Germany, operation June is launched as mass arrests of Jews take place.

19 June 1938

Boys of 13 and younger are recruited by the Nazis to paint the Star of David on Jewish Shops in Berlin.

27 June 1938

All Jews in Vienna are given 14 days notice by their employers that their services are no longer required.

30 June 1938

Kurt Schuschnigg, the last Chancellor of pre-Nazi Austria is informed that he is to be tried for treason.

01 July 1938

Germany accepts the responsibility for Austria’s debts.

06-15 July 1938

The Evian Conference meets to discuss the restriction of Jewish refugees.

22 July 1938

German Jews are ordered by the authorities to carry special identity cards.

August 1938

The Commander-in-Chief of the French Air Force accepts an invitation from Goering to pay an official visit to the Reich. Goering uses the visit to show off Germany’s new and powerful air force.

03 August 1938

Mussolini’s government bans all foreign Jews from attending Italian higher education institutions.

17 August 1938

Austria’s former leaders, including their ex-Chancellor Schuschnigg are imprisoned within

Dachau concentration camp. 17 August 1938

A new decree is issued by the Nazi authorities that all Jews are to adopt the names Israel or Sarah before their existing forenames.

26 August 1938

Jewish Emigration office opens in Vienna.

01 September 1938

Italy expels all Jews whom had migrated to Italy after 1918.

05 September 1938

French troops are sent to the Maginot Line as tension grows between Germany and Czechoslovakia.

06 September 1938

The Czech government offers the Sudetenland self-government.

07 September 1938

A British newspaper, The Times, publishes an article calling for the Sudetenland to be handed over to Hitler’s Germany.

08 September 1938

Sudeten Germans hold mass rallies calling for union with Germany.

13 September 1938

The Sudetenland German Party breaks off all talks with the Czech government.

14 September 1938

The Czech government declare martial law in the Sudetenland.

21 September 1938

The Czech government accept in principle the Anglo-French plans to cede the Sudetenland to Germany.

23 September 1938

The Czech government orders general mobilisation following Premier Hodza’s resignation and replaces him with General Jan Syrovy.

27 September 1938

In Germany, Jewish lawyers are forbidden to practice law.

28 September 1938

Hitler calls for a four-power conference to discuss the current Czech crises.

30 September 1938

Neville Chamberlain from Britain, Daladie from France, Italy’s Mussolini and Germany’s Adolf Hitler meets in Munich to discuss the Czech crises. Hitler gains all his demands during the negotiations - the Sudetenland is to be annexed to Germany. Many of the Czech people now feel that Britain and France has betrayed them.

01 October 1938

German troops march into the Sudetenland.

03 October 1938

The First Lord of the Admiralty, Duff Cooper resigns over Chamberlains appeasement of Hitler during the Czech crises.

05 October 1938

Hitler visits the Sudetenland.

05 November 1938

The President of Czechoslovakia, Benes resigns from office.

05 October 1938

German Jews have their passports stamped in the letter ‘J’ to identify their Jewishness.

07 October 1938

Jews in Germany are ordered to hand over their passports within 14 days. They are issued with a special identity card in its place.

16 October 1938

Many Italian Jews are arrested by the Italian authorities charged with plotting to overthrow the government.

18 October 1938

Some 15,000 Jews are forced to leave their homes throughout Germany, and go with only a single suitcase to the nearest railway station. From there they will be transferred to the German-Polish border, were they would be forced over the border at gunpoint.

28 October 1938

Many more Jews are rounded up in Germany and deported to Poland.

October 1938

The Polish government announces that all Polish Jews who have lived outside Poland for more than five years will have their passports revoked and declared stateless.

02 November 1938

Following arbitration by Hitler, Hungary annexes the southern parts of Slovakia and Ruthenia.

07 November 1938

A Polish Jew by the name Herzel Grynspan shoots the German diplomat Ernst von Rath in Paris because of the Nazi persecution of his parents other Jews.

08 November 1938

In an address to SS leaders, Himmler states ‘In Germany the Jew cannot hold out. This is a question of years. We will drive them out more and more with an unprecedented ruthlessness.’

09 November 1938

An orgy of anti-Semitic violence erupts all over Germany and Austria in retaliation of the murder of the German diplomat Ernst von Rath in Paris. The pogrom was organised by the Nazi leadership and became known as Kristalnacht (crystal Night - Night of Broken Glass, due to the amount of broken glass laying all over the sidewalks in Germany)

10 November 1938

Eighteen synagogues destroyed in Vienna by rampaging mobs taking revenge for the murder of

Ernst von Rath in Paris by Herzel Grynspan in Paris. 10 November 1938

The Jews living in Munich are given 48 hours to leave the city or face life in a concentration camp.

12 November 1938

The Nazi authorities fine the Jewish community one billion marks because of the violence and destruction that occurred after Kristalnacht.

12 November 1938

Hermann Goering at a meeting in the Air Ministry states ‘If the German Reich comes into foreign-political conflict in the foreseeable future, it can be taken for granted that we in Germany will think in the first instance of bringing about a great showdown with the Jews.’

14 November 1938

Jews are expelled from colleges in Berlin.

15 November 1938

In Washington, President Roosevelt condemns the Nazi pogroms against the Jews.

23 November 1938

The Nazis place a 20% tax on Jewish property worth over 5,000 marks.

06 December 1938

In Paris, the German Foreign minister von Ribbentrop signs a Declaration of Peace and Friendship pact with France.

08 December 1938

Germany launches their first aircraft carrier, the Graf Zeppelin.

09 December 1938

Memel Germans in Lithuania demand a union with the Reich.

24 December 1938

Pope Pius XI attacks Italian anti-Semitism.

1939 01 January 1939

By decree Jews in Nazi Germany are no longer allowed to run either retail shops, workshops or wholesales establishments.

01 January 1939

The Nazi government in Germany orders that all women under 25 years old do at least one years civilian service for the Reich.

09 January 1939

Hitler opens the newly refurbished Reichstag in Berlin after the fire of 1933.

11 January 1939

The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and his Foreign Secretary Lord Halifax meet

Mussolini in Rome. 17 January 1937

In Germany, Jews are forbidden to practise dentistry, veterinary and to act as pharmacists. They are also disqualified from driving on Germanys roads and visiting cinemas.

24 January 1939

Hermann Goering instructs Reinhard Heydrich to set up a Reich Central Office for Jewish Immigration in Berlin like the one already set up under Adolf Eichmann in Austria.

25 January 1939

The German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop pays an official visit to the Polish capital of Warsaw to commemorate the fifth anniversary of their 1934 non-aggression pact

February 1939

In Britain, the government starts to issue Anderson Shelters in areas most likely to be targeted by the Luftwaffe.

02 February 1939

The British government announces that they plan to appoint 12 Civil Defence Commissioners in case of war.

10 February 1939

In the Vatican, Pope Pius XI dies. Pius XI was an outspoken critic of Fascism and Nazism.

14 February 1939

The Germans launch the 35,000-ton battleship Bismarck.

16 February 1939

The German envoy to the Vatican asks the College of Cardinals to elect a Pope sympathetic to Nazism and Fascism.

23 February 1939

The German government orders all Jews to hand over all precious stones and metals.

25 February 1939

The Nazi government issues a decree demanding that at least 100 Jews a day leave the Reich.

March 1939

‘Law of March’ made the joining of the Hitler Youth compulsory between the ages of 10 and 18 for all boys and girls in Germany.

02 March 1939

Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli is elected to be the next Pope by the College of Cardinals.

05 March 1939

In Germany, Jews are forced to work for the Reich.

12 March 1939

The Coronation in Rome of Eugenio Pacelli as Pope Pius XII takes place in the Vatican City.

13 March 1939

In Berlin, Hitler demands that the Czech government grant Slovakia and Ruthenia independence.

14 March 1939

The Slovaks declare independence from the rump state of Czechoslovakia.

15 March 1939

German troops occupy the rest of Czechoslovakia while Hitler and von Ribbentrop leave for Prague in Hitler’s specially built train. In Britain, the Prime Minister, Neville Chamberlain astonishes the members of the House of Commons by stating that the Nazi invasion of the rest of Czechoslovakia was not a breach of the Munich Agreement.

17 March 1939

The British Prime Minister recalls the British ambassador to Berlin and denounces Hitler for the German occupation of Czechoslovakia.

20 March 1939

The German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop issues the Lithuanian government with an ultimatum demanding that Memel be handed over to the Reich. Memel had once been a German city and had been ripped from the German Reich after the First World War. If they refused, von Ribbentrop declared, Kaunas (Kovno) would be bombed. Before the Lithuanian government could respond, Hitler had boarded the German Cruiser Deutschland and sailed with the naval squadron to take Memel by force.

23 March 1939

The Lithuanian government surrenders the city of Memel to the Germans after their plea for help fell on deaf ears. Hitler entered the city at 2.30pm.

28 March 1939

The Spanish civil war ends.

30 March 1939

In New York, Adolf Hitler’s nephew William Hitler, calls his uncle a menace.

31March 1939

The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, finally accepts that only force would stop Hitler from annexing other countries informs the House of Commons that Britain would offer Poland unconditional support in the event of Polish independence is threatened.

05 April 1939

Britain’s largest aircraft carrier, HMS Illustrious is launched in Barrow.

06 April 1939

In London, Britain, France and Poland sign a mutual assistance pact in case of attack.

07 April 1939

Italy invades Albania.

09 April 1939

In London, the British government warns Italy not to go beyond Albania.

09 April 1939

Pope Pius XII denounces violations of international treaties.

10 April 1939

The Dutch send troops to the German border.

14 April 1939

Hermann Goering visits Rome to congratulate Mussolini on his success in Albania.

15 April 1939

Hitler receives a letter from the American President, Franklin D Roosevelt asking him for assurances that he has no intention of attacking certain countries either in Europe or Africa.

16 April 1939

Goering returns to Berlin from Rome.

18 April 1939

Britain vows to assistance to Holland, Denmark and Switzerland if they are attacked.

20 April 1939

The government in London announces that it will set up a Ministry of Supply.

27 April 1939

The British government introduce military conscription.

28 April 1939

In the Reichstag, Hitler makes a scathing attack on President Roosevelt after reading out the letter he had received from him earlier in the month.

He then goes on to renounce the 1934 Non-

Aggression Pact with Poland and the 1935 Naval Agreement which he had made with Britain. 30 April 1939

The USSR offers a mutual aid pact with Britain and France.

01 May 1939

The Military Training Bill (Conscription) is introduced in Britain.

02 May 1939

Germany offers Denmark a non-aggression pact.

05 May 1939

The German Ministry of Propaganda is told to cease all anti-Soviet attacks.

07 May 1939

Spain leaves the League of Nations.

08 May 1939

In Rome, Pope Pius XII asks Britain, France, Germany, Poland and Italy to attend peace talks in the Vatican.

11 May 1939

The British government warns Hitler not to use force in Danzig or a state of war will exist

between them. 14-20 May 1939

Hitler, accompanied by Heinrich Himmler and Karl Wollf, inspects the West Wall fortifications

19 May 1939

In London, MPs debate the USSR’s offer of a treaty with Britain and France.

22 May 1939

Germany and Italy sign a formal alliance known as the ‘Pact of Steel’

31 May 1939

In Berlin, Germany and Denmark sign a non-aggression pact.

01 June 1939

Nazi Germany guarantees Yugoslavia’s borders.

03 June 1939

Britain’s first military conscripts are enrolled.

07 June 1939

Germany deports several hundred Polish Jews back to Poland.

15 June 1939

General Walther von Brauchitsch, the Commander of Chief of the army hands over to Hitler the plans for the invasion of Poland.

15 June 1939

Britain announces plans to establish a new Ministry of Information.

21 June 1939

In Berlin, the Nazis demand more restraints against Jewish Czech business activities.

23 June 1939

Hitler calls a meeting with his commanders-in-chief as well as their chiefs of staff. He inform them that he would attack Poland at the first opportunity stating that Danzig may give him the excuse to invade. At this point Hitler still believes that Britain and France would not intervene.

24 June 939

The Brazilian President, Getulio Vargas allows 3,000 German Jews entry in Brazil.

02 July 1939

The King of Britain approves the formation of a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

03 July 1939

Hermann Goering puts on a display of his new aircraft for Hitler at Rechlin. Here Hitler sees the world’s first jet-propelled aircraft, the He-176 as well as a rocket-boosted take-off of an overloaded He-111 bomber. Hitler was extremely impressed at what he saw, but Goering failed to inform him that mostly what he saw would not be operationally ready until 1942-43.

04 July 1939

In Vienna, Nazis attack the Archbishop of Vienna Cardinal Theodor Innitzer.

06 July 1939

In Berlin, All Reich Jews are ordered to join the new ‘Union of Jews’

27 July 1939

An Anglo French delegation arrives in Moscow to discuss a three-power defence alliance.

August 1939

Theodor Eicke is promoted to Higher SS and Police Leader in preparation of the German invasion of Poland.

08 August 1939

Reinhard Heydrich chairs a secret meeting with his SD officers in Berlin.. The meeting discusses a possible plan which will trigger a war between Poland and Germany. The aim is to ensure that Poland is looked upon as the aggressor. The plan is named Hindenburg.

10 August 1939

Reinhard Heydrich chairs a second secret meeting with his SD officers to go over the Hindenburg Plan (the plan that is aimed to start a war between Poland and Germany).

11 August 1939

Fearing a war was coming, and which his country and armed forces were by far not ready, and believing that von Ribbentrop had duped them into signing the Pact of Steel, Mussolini sends his Foreign Minister, Count Galeazzo Ciano to Germany and is met by von Ribbentrop at Fuschl. Ciano’s mission was to find out exactly what the Germans were planning and try to get them to postpone any acts of aggression until Italy is ready.

von Ribbentrop dismisses Ciano’s protest

and pleas and when he was asked by the Italian Minister if Germany wants Danzig or the Corridor, Ribbentrop replied that Germany now desired war to the horror of Ciano. 12 August 1939

At the Berghof, Count Ciano tries to persuade Hitler not to go to war but is disappointed with Hitler’s attitude towards maintaining peace. It is at this meeting that he hears of Hitler’s attempt to establish negotiations with Stalin and that the Soviet Leader had asked that a minister be sent to Moscow to open the discussions.

12 August 1939

An Anglo-French military mission arrives in Moscow to seek a mutual assistance pact with the Soviet Union. Stalin believes that Britain and France are not sincere in coming to an agreement with the Soviet Union after he discovers that the Anglo-French party have no member with any political credentials and that they had absolutely no power to negotiate.

13 August 1939

Angry and totally disgusted with the Germans, the Italian Foreign Minister Count Ciano leaves Germany to return to Rome.

14 August 1939

In Germany, von Ribbentrop, on Hitler’s instructions, offers himself to the Soviets as the minister to start negotiations between Nazi-Germany and the Soviet Union.

16 August 1939

The Registrar-General in London states that in event of war off citizens will be issued with identity cards.

17 August 1939

Germany closes the border with Poland in Upper Silesia.

18 August 1939

Joachim von Ribbentrop and the Soviet Foreign Minister, Vyacheslav Molotov agree to a trade treaty. Germany would supply the USSR with manufactured goods worth some 200 million

marks in return the Soviets would give Germany foodstuffs, oil and raw materials to the same value. Ribbentrop was disappointed when his request to sign the treaty the same day was turned down. Molotov claimed that the treaty had to get approval from his government first. When von Ribbentrop requested that they discuss the Non-Aggression treaty Molotov responded that the trade treaty would have to be signed first but a few hours later Ribbentrop was told that they had decided that the trade treaty could be signed the following day and with this handed over his draft copy of the Non-aggression pact and telling him to return to Moscow on 26 or 27 August for the official signing of the pact knowing that this would cause Hitler problems. The Soviets knew that Hitler had planned to invade Poland on the 26 August. 20 August 1939

Polish troops are rushed to the Polish-German border as international tension between the two states increase.

August 1939

Fearing that Britain would declare war on Germany if she invaded Poland and wishing to try to dissuade them from doing so, Hermann Goering sends a personal message to Halifax offering to come to England to discuss the situation. Chamberlain approves the meeting

August 1939

Hitler in an attempt to cut through diplomatic red tape writes a personal letter to Stalin asking him to accept his Foreign Minister either on the 22nd or 23rd August to complete the pact.

August 1939

Stalin responds to Hitler’s letter and instructs Molotov to invite the German delegation back to Moscow on 23rd August to sign the Non-aggression Pact.

22 August 1939

In London, Britain and France reaffirm their pledge to come to Poland’s aide if she is attacked.

23 August 1939

Joachim von Ribbentrop meets with Molotov in Moscow and signs the Non-Aggression Pact with the Soviet Union. As part of the Pact, it is agreed that western Poland would be occupied by the Germans whilst the eastern part would fall under Soviet control.

23 August 1939

The government in Belgium restates its neutrality in the event of a war breaking out in Europe.

24 August 1939

Britain and Poland sign a mutual assistance pact and Neville Chamberlain is giving wide-ranging war powers.

25 August 1939

All valuable treasures that can be moved to safety from all major museum and galleries in London are moved.

26 August 1939

Hitler demands that the free-city of Danzig be returned to Germany and that Germany be given free access to Danzig via a Polish corridor and that Britain and France renounce their pledge of

assistance to Poland. 28 August 1939

The British Admiralty announces the closure of the Baltic and Mediterranean to British shipping.

29 August 1939

Hitler sends an ultimatum to the Polish government on the Danzig and Corridor questions.

30 August 1939

Hitler appoints Hermann Goering as Chairman of the Ministerial Council for the Defence of the Reich.

30 August 1939

The French Government evacuate some 16,000 children from Paris

31 August 1939

At 0400 hours, a group of German SD men dressed in Polish army uniforms carry out a mock attack on the German customs post at Hochlinden. The custom post personnel had been replaced with other SD men prior to the fake attack. These SD men, using blank ammunition returned fire and after the mock attack the customs post was destroyed.. To make it look like an authentic attack, The SD men left a few dead concentration camp prisoners wearing the uniform of the Polish army behind and to prevent later identification these prisoners had their faces smashed in with blows from rifle butts. At 2000 hours, a group of Reinhard Heydrich’s SD men, dressed as Polish civilians attack a German gamekeepers house at Pitschen. The SD men sing Polish songs as they fire shots into the air before smashing up the house. Operation Hindenburg was over.

31 August 1939

The British government call up their Army and RAF reserves and order the mobilisation of the Royal Navy.

Early September 1939

Joseph Goebbels bans the listening to foreign broadcasts, including those of Germany’s allies, the penalty for doing so could range from imprisonment to execution, especially if one repeated what one heard.

01 September 1939

Germany invades Poland with over one and a half million men. Britain and France warn Germany that unless she withdraws her troops from Poland a state of war would exist between them. The deadline for the ultimatum is set for 11am on the 3rd of September 1939.

01 September 1939

Italy announces its neutrality.

02 September 1939

The concentration camp at Stutthof (about 35km east of Danzig) is opened by the Germans.

02 September 1939

The Germans launch an air raid against Warsaw killing at least 21 people.

03 September 1939

At 11am Britain and France hear nothing from Germany concerning their ultimatum and at 11:15am Britain informs her citizens that their country is at war with Germany. At 11:35, the first air raid siren is heard in London, which proves to be a false alarm.

03 September 1939

Hitler leaves Berlin on his special train Amerika for the frontline in Poland.

03 September 1939

The British passenger liner Athenia is sunk by the German U-boat – U-30, some 200 miles west of the Hebridian islands killing 114 out of 1,400 passengers. Later the commander of the U-boat clamed that he thought the ship was armed merchant ship.

04 September 939

French troops cross the German border into the Saarland.

05 September 1939

The United States declares its neutrality.

06 September 1939

To Polish government flees from Warsaw to Brest-Litovsk.

6-17 September 1939

France launches a minor Saar offensive.

07 September 1939

German troops are sent to counter the French that have entered the Saarland.

08 September 1939

German scouts reach the suburbs of Warsaw whilst some 60,000 Polish troops are surrounded near Radom, south of Warsaw.

09 September 1939

The Reich Minister of the Interior orders the police to make sure that all prostitutes are registered, and to ensure that they go through examinations by health officials.

09 September 1939

All Jewish men in Gelsenkirchen, in the Ruhr, Germany are deported to the concentration camp at Sachsenhausen.

10 September 1939

Canada declares war on Germany.

12 September 1939

The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain flies to France for talks with the Allied Supreme Council.

16 September 1939

The German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop informs the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov that he believes that Warsaw will fall the next day.

17 September 1939

The Soviet Union invade the eastern part of Poland, claiming that she was intervening to protect

ethnic Russians living there. The true fact was that under the Nazi-Soviet pact, Russia was to occupy the eastern half of Poland as her reward for not intervening against Germany’s invasion. 18 September 1939

The British aircraft carrier HMS Courageous is sunk in the Atlantic with the loss of some 500 men.

19 September 1939

Hitler is greeted with enthusiasm by Danzig Germans during a visit of the city.

19 September 1939

Neville Chamberlain states in London that the war will only be over once Hitlerism has been destroyed.

20 September 1939

London receives reports that anti-German revolts are taking place in Bohemia, Moravia and Slovakia.

21 September 1939

In Poland the Germans issue a decree stating that all Jewish communities with less than 500 Jews are to be dissolved and that the said dissolved Jewish communities are to move in Nazi authorised areas of larger cities or other special areas which have been set aside for them.

22 September 1939

The ex head of the German Army, Werner Feiherr von Fritsch, serving in an artillery regiment is fatally wounded on the outskirts of Warsaw.

22 September 1939

The Nazis establish the Reich Main security Office in Germany.

23-24 September 1939

Eicke instructs 2 battalions of the Brandenburg Division, which is stationed in and around Loclawek to Bydgoszoz to eliminate Polish intellectuals and municipal leaders. Some 800 Poles are murdered in this action.

25 September 1939

the Germans launch Operation Coast, an air assault on Warsaw. Over 400 planes are involved.

26 September 1939

The Polish commander in Warsaw asks General von Brauchitsch, who is in command of the German 8th Army, for a truce, but Brauchitsch refuses stating that he would only accept unconditional surrender of all Polish troops in and around Warsaw.

26 September 1939

Hitler boards his special train and heads back to Berlin.

26 September 1939

In France, the French Communist Party is dissolved by the government.

September 1939

Scientists in Germany meet in Berlin to discuss ways of harnessing energy from nuclear fusion. The German War Office agrees to assist the scientists in any way they can.

27 September 1939

Warsaw surrenders to the Germans at 2pm. Some 140,000 Polish soldiers are taken into captivity.

28 September 1939

Poland is partitioned between Germany and the USSR.

30 September 1939

The German pocket battleship ‘Admiral Graf Spee’ sinks the British merchant ship ‘Clement’.

Late September 1939

Kurt Daluege suggests to Reinhard Heydrich the possibility of using suitable anti-Semitic Poles in their racial war against the Jews.

01 October 1939

The German army march triumphantly into Warsaw.

01 October 1939

British bombers drop leaflets over Berlin telling the populace that their leaders have tricked them into going to war.

02 October 1939

The United States government recognises the Polish government in exile which is being set up in Paris.

03 September 1939

Neville Chamberlain in London states that a new Whitehall department aimed at handling censorship is to be set up.

04 October 1939

In Warsaw the Nazi authorities set up a Judenrat to help assist them in the controlling the Jewish population. The Judenrat is made up of prominent Jews.

05 October 1939

Latvia signs a mutual aid pact with the USSR in Riga.

06 October 1939

Hitler offers Britain and France a chance for peace in which he proposes a four-power peace conference stating at the end that this would be his last offer of peace if Britain and France reject the proposal and he reaffirms his friendship with Belgium and Holland.

07 October 1939

Britain rejects Hitler’s peace overtures.

08 October 1939

Hitler and Goering sign the decree that officially annexed western Poland and make it part of Greater Germany.

This new territory is named Warthegau the rump that was left of Poland is

given the name General-Government of Poland. Governed by the Nazi party’s legal advisor Hans Frank. From the outset Frank let it be known that Poles would now to be regarded as slaves to the Third Reich. 08 October 1939

The Nazis set up their first Jewish Ghetto in Piotrkow Trybunalski.

October 1939

Heinrich Himmler, Lord of the SS and with Hitler’s blessing set up the Reich Commissariat for the Consolidation of German Nationhood (the office which took control off all racial matters) sets up a Central Land Office. The Central Land Office will deal with the handing out of land to Volksdeutsche, (People with German blood) as well as a Central Office for Evacuation.

09 October 1939

A Swedish businessman, Birger Dahlerus meets Hitler in Berlin to discuss a negotiated peace settlement with the Allied powers. Dahlerus informs the Fuhrer that Britain and France is demanding the restoration of Poland to its pre-war boundaries and that the German people be given a free vote on Hitler’s foreign policies and that Germany destroy all her weapons of aggression.

09 October 1939

Hitler draws up a new directive (Operation Yellow) detailing the forthcoming offensive against the West, which would incorporate breaching the Netherlands neutrality as a means of defeating the Allied powers.

09 October 1939

Philipp Bouler, head of Hitler’s Chancellery, sends out census forms to all hospitals and doctors. The aim of the forms is to collect information on patients, who are deemed senile, criminally insane, or of non-German blood, so that they can be dealt with in Hitler’s now secret euthanasia programme. Many thousands are murdered by Nazi doctors under this policy.

09 October 1939

The Prices of Food Bill is introduced in Britain as a ay to prevent profiteering from the war.

10 October 1939

Birger Dahlerus meets Hitler again, this time it is to relay the Fuhrers reply to the Allied Powers peace settlement, he informs them that Poland will remain within the German sphere of influence and at the same time, he demands the return of all German pre-Great War colonies or substitute territories.

10 October 1939

Finland mobilises their Baltic fleet.

11 October 1939

A Friend of Albert Einstein, Alexander Sachs meets with the American President, Dwight Roosevelt. Sachs brings the President a letter from Einstein, which explains that atomic energy could be used to create a very potent weapon. Roosevelt sets up an advisory committee on uranium, which holds its first meeting in Washington. America is now in the race to create nuclear weapons.

11 October 1939

The French Premier Daladier turns down Hitler’s peace feelers.

11 October 1939

The USSR cede the former Polish city of Vilna to Lithuania.

12 October 1939

The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill informs the British nation of his rejection of Hitler’s offer of peace during a speech on national radio.

13 October 1939

The German submarine U-47, under the command of Gunther Prien, the commander, penetrated the British naval defences at Scapa Flow in the early hours. With 3 torpedoes, she sinks the British battleship ‘Royal Oak’ as she lay at anchor, killing more than 833 men.

13 October 1939

In Washington, President Roosevelt rejects Hitler’s proposal that the US mediate between Britain, France and Germany.

15 October 1939

The German counter-Intelligence agency the Abwehr, forms a second company to compliment it’s first. This 2nd Company’s made up of Rumanian Volksdeutsche as well as Baltic Germans and a handful of men who lived in Palestine.

15 October 1939

The first German aircraft (2 X bombers) are brought down by fighters over British territory.

16 October 1939

The German authorities order all Poles to leave the Port and city of Gydnia as well as all the towns and villages within the annexed areas of Poland.

17 October 1939

A decree is issued by the German Ministerial Council for the Defences of the Reich, giving the SS field division’s judicial independence from the German army.

17 October 1939

The German army loses its administrative control in Poland. Hans Frank is given complete control to administer the country.

18 October 1939

Keitel receives Hitler’s Directive No 7 for the conduct of the war. It authorises attacks on Passenger ships in convoy or proceeding without lights.

19 October 1939

Turkey signs a mutual assistance pact with Britain and France in Ankara.

22 October 1939

Joseph Goebbels tells the German people that Winston Churchill had ordered the sinking of the British passenger liner Athenia so that Germany could be blamed for propaganda purposes.

24 October 1939

The British Expeditionary Force in France set up their first casualty clearing station.

25 October 1939

The British government drops all unfinished pre-war legislation.

26 October 1939

Nazi civil administration takes over control of the General government (occupied Poland).

28 October 1939

The SS in Germany proposes that all Jews be made to wear the Star of David.

30 October 1939

In the Polish town of Turek, Jews are gathered together in the local synagogue and are made to crawl along the pews singing. While continuously beaten with whips by SS man. They are then forced to take down their trousers so that they can be beaten on their bare buttocks. One Jew, who had fouled his trousers in fear, was compelled to smear his excrement over the faces of the other Jews.

31 October 1939

The USSR declares that she will remain neutral.

November 1939

Joseph Goebbels visits occupied Poland to visit his newly established propaganda branches within the Governor-Generals Ministry.

01 November 1939

The British government announces that bacon and butter will be rationed from mid-December.

03 November 1939

Some 96 schoolteachers in the Polish town of Rypin, are arrested by the Gestapo and shot within the school premises or are taken to a nearby wood to be executed.

03 November 1939

The American Congress repeals the provision from their ‘Neutrality Act’ that stopped them selling arms to belligerent countries and granting economic credits to such countries.

05 November 1939

Some 167 Polish professors and lecturers at Cracow University are arrested by the Gestapo and sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

07 November 1939

Heinrich Himmler orders the removal of all Jews and Poles from the annexed areas of Poland. They are to be relocated within the General-Government of Poland.

07 November 1939

An Anglo-French purchase commission is set up in Washington to purchase US defence materials.

08 November 1939

Failed assassination attempt on Hitler in Munich as 7 people are killed and some 60 injured when a bomb exploded in the Buergerbraukeller. Hitler had cut his speech short and left the hall earlier than expected thus missing the explosion.

09 November 1939

21 Jews are summarily executed in Buchenwald concentration camp. The youngest of these victims was just 17.

09 November 1939

The Nazis incorporate Lodz into the Reich.

10 November 1939

In Switzerland, general mobilisation is ordered

11 November 1939

350 Poles are removed from a labour camp near Gdynia to the prison in the town of Wejherowo, where they are forced to dig their own graves, then brought to the pits in groups and shot.

14 November 1939

Winston Churchill informs the war cabinet in Britain that Germany is using a new weapon, magnetic mines which are being used against shipping.

17 November 1939

In Prague, The Nazis execute 9 Czech students for leading anti-German demonstrations.

22 November 1939

53 Jews are executed as a reprisal for the killing of a Polish policeman whom had been murdered by a Jew. The Gestapo had promised to release their prisoners if a ransom was paid. When the Warsaw Jewish Council brought the money, they were informed that the prisoners had already been executed. The Gestapo kept the money. This was the first mass killing of Jews within Warsaw.

22 November 1939

A German magnetic mine is discovered on mudflats near shoeburyness, recovered and dismantled the British discovered how it worked and the Admiralty set out to find ways to deal with them.

23 November 1939

General Petzel, the German commander in the Warthegau, wrote a report on the SS and Gestapo’s brutalities which General Blaskowitz sent to Hitler.

23 November 1939

Hans Frank, the German Governor of occupied Poland (known as the General Government) orders all Jews and Jewesses over the age of 10 years old throughout the conquered land, must identify themselves as Jews by wearing a 4 inch white armband marked by the Star of David on the right sleeve of their inner and outer clothing. In Warsaw the Star is blue.

23 November 1939

The Luftwaffe drop mines on the Thames estuary.

24 November 1939

The Gestapo execute 120 Czech students because of their anti-Nazi activities

25 November 1939

The USSR demands that Finland withdraws her troops at least 16 miles from the Russian border.

26 November 1939

The Finnish government ignores the USSR’s demand to withdraw their troops from the Russian border as clashes between them occur.

28 November 1939

Stalin renounces his country’s non-aggression pact with Finland.

30 November 1939

The Red Army invades Finland. 26 Soviet divisions (465,000 men) take on only 9 Finnish divisions (130,000 men). The Soviets believed that the Finns would capitulate quickly; therefore they decided not to issue their troops with winter clothing.

01 December 1939

Mass deportations of Jews from German occupied territory begin under Adolf Eichmann.

02 December 1939

The Soviet News agency ‘Tass’ announces the establishment of a ‘people’s government of Finland’, even though the fighting was still continuing. In this war, the Finns invented a simple but deadly device, which consisted of glass bottles partially filled with petrol, with rags in the neck of the bottle. These devices were primarily used against Soviet armour with devastating effect. This new weapon was quickly dubbed the ‘Molotov Cocktail’.

December 1939

Every Polish inmate of the Stralsund Mental Hospital, are taken to the Stutthof concentration camp, near Danzig and shot. Their bodies are then buried by Polish prisoners, who are then shot after their task is complete. Other mental asylums throughout the General Government area were also emptied of patients and killed.

December 1939

For the death of 2 German soldiers, who had died at the hands of 2 Polish criminals that were trying to evade arrest, 170 men and boys are rounded up in Wawer and the nearby village of Anin. All the prisoners were taking to a nearby tunnel where they where held for several hours before being taken in groups of 10 and shot. Two American citizens were among those shot.

December 1939

The Finnish army which faced the Soviet 163rd and 54th divisions managed to drive them back across the Soviet border. Stalin in a rage ordered the execution of General Vinogradov, who had commanded the 54th division. Over 26,000 Russian troops were killed as a result of Finnish action and the freezing cold weather.

07 December 1939

The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain announces that 30 fighter aircraft is to be sent to Finland in support of their war against the Soviet Union. Britain, France and Italy would later give extra weapons to volunteers who would travel to Finland to help the Finns fight against the Soviets.

07 December 1939

Hitler issues his ‘Night and Fog’ decree, which authorised the arrest of anyone suspected of endangering German security. Anyone arrested under this decree was not to be executed straight away, but to disappear without trace into the ‘Night and Fog’ of the concentration camps. Inmates who had the letters NN (Nacht und Nebel) against their names, signalled execution.

08 December 1939

31 Poles, 6 of whom are Jews, are shot in Warsaw. They had been accused of ‘acts of sabotage’.

11 December 1939

The League of Nations in Geneva debate the Soviet Union’s naked act of aggression against Finland. It ends with the Soviet Union’s expulsion from the league.

12 December 1939

The German authorities in occupied Poland (the General Government) decree that all Jewish males from the age of 14 to 60 must do a 2 year ‘forced labour’ commitment.

12 December 1939

Jews from occupied Kalisz in western Poland are expelled. At least 1,000 able bodied men are sent to a forced labour camp at Kozminek, some 35km northwest of Kalisz.

13 December 1939

The German pocket battleship Graf Spee reaches the Uruguayan harbour in Montevideo.

14 December 1939

1,500 Jews are deported from Poznan into the General Government area of Poland.

14 December 1939

Stalin’s USSR is expelled from the League of Nations following their Pact with Germany.

17 December 1939

The German battleship, the Graf Spee, is scuttled by her captain, Hans Langsdorff, to prevent British cruisers, Achilles, Ajax and Exeter from capturing her or sinking her. Langsdorff commits suicide by shooting himself in a hotel room in Montevideo.

17 December 1939

7,500 Canadian volunteers arrive in Britain to assist her in the war against Germany.

19 December 1939

The Germans launch their 7.860 ton cruiser ‘Atlantis’ which had been converted from a freighter. Her main tasks are the destruction of Allied merchant shipping. To aid her in her aims, she would fly various national flags as a deceptive means to getting close to enemy shipping. The Atlantis quickly became one of Germany’s deadliest weapons.

19 December 1939

The British Admiralty reports to the War Cabinet that they have devised a way to demagnetise their ships, thus being able to avoid German magnetic mines.

19 December 1939

The first Canadian troops arrive in Britain.

22 December 1939

Women working in the arms industry in Britain demand that they get the same pay levels as their male counterparts.

23 December 1939

Stalin’s sacks General Meretzkov after the Red army’s poor performance against the Finns.

24 December 1939

Hitler spends Christmas with the troops on the western front.

28 December 193

In Britain, rationing is to be extended to incorporate sugar and meat.

28/29 December 1939

Hitler receives a letter from the German industrialist Fritz Thyssen, condemning his Soviet pact and the Nazi persecution of Christians and Jews in Germany. Thyssen had supported the Nazi’s between 1932 up to 1935. Thyssen had already complained to Hitler in letters in the past.

31 December 1939

The Finns claim that they have managed to push the Soviet forces back over the border on a 150mile front.

1940 January 1940

France establishes its first two armoured divisions.

Early January 1940

Some 2,000 Polish prisoners of war are sealed up within railway cattle trucks in Warsaw. The prisoners are kept in these conditions for 13 days. When the doors are finally opened, at least 211 prisoners are found frozen to death and many more will die soon after. Many of the prisoners had been driven insane by their ordeal.

01 January 1940

The Finnish 9th Division attacks the Soviet 44th Division and inflicts serious damage to it.

03 January 1940

In the evening, the German u-boat U-25 moors un-noticed next to the German merchant ship Thalia in the Spanish port of C diz for refuelling and to take on supply’s which is in breach of Spanish neutrality.

03 January 1940

The Australian government promises planes and some 3,000 airmen to the allied cause.

05 January 1940

Leslie Hore-Belisha is replaced as the British Secretary of State for War by Oliver Stanley.

06 January 1940

General Vinogradov, commander of the Soviet 44th Division that recently been attacked by the Finnish 9th Division, authorise the remnants of the Division to pull back into Soviet territory.

06 January 1940

The British government warns Norway that they intend to mine waters as an attempt to disrupt Germany’s shipment of iron ore. They claimed that Germany has been flouting Norwegian neutrality since the start of the war.

07 January 1940

It is reported that 50,000 Soviet soldiers have died since the USSR’s armed aggression against

Finland. 09 January 1940

Some 152 people are killed when the liner Union Castle is sunk my a mine off the south-east coast of Britain.

08 January 1940

More than 300,000 British schoolchildren return to their homes after being evacuated to the countryside at the outbreak of the war.

09 January 1940

Dr Hildebrandt. SS-Chief and Chief of Police of Greater Danzig-West Prussia, informs Himmler that two of his units have eliminated about 6,000 mental patients within his jurisdiction.

10 January 1940

Hitler decides that the 17th January is to be the date for his offensive against France and Britain, stating that mass attacks on French airfields would begin on January 14th.

10 January 1940

The Luftwaffe attack 12 ships, sinking three and killing 35 people off Britain’s shores.

11 January 1940

Sweden promises to help Finland with aid.

13 January 1940

Due to bad weather forecasts, Hitler orders a three-day postponement for his attack in the West. Colonel Hans Oster, deputy chief of the German secret service, passes on Germany’s plans of invasion to the Dutch military attaché in Berlin.

13 January 1940

The British government get the go-ahead from the Swedish authorities to allow their volunteers, embarked to fight with Finns against the Soviets passage through Swedish territory, provided that they travel unarmed and out of uniform. This volunteer force was to be known as the Stratford.

16 January 1940

Hitler again postpones his assault on the West until spring. This is due to the worsening weather forecasts.

Mid January 1940

Allied cryptographers make a breakthrough in being able to read German secret communications that are being sent via their Enigma machines. The Germans always believed that the Enigma code was unbreakable.

18 January 1940

Sweden, Norway and Denmark reaffirm the countries neutrality.

18 January 1940

255 Jews are arrested and taken to Palmiry woods, located just outside Warsaw they are shot.

24 January 1940

In occupied Poland (Generalgovernment) all property owned by Jews are to be registered.

25 January 1940

Hans Frank informs the people of Poland that they will have to supply Germany with all raw materials, chemicals and manpower that the Reich needs. This manpower is to be used within the industrial and agricultural areas of production. Some 750,000 men and women would be used as slave labour within the Reich.

25 January 1940

The Nazis establish a Judenrat in Lublin.

26 January 1940

In Warsaw, the Nazis fine the Jewish Judenrat after some ethnic Germans are beaten up in the street.

26 January 1940

The Nazi government warn its citizens that listening to foreign broadcasts is a crime punishable by death.

29 January 1940

The Soviet government begins secret negotiations with the Swedish government.

30 January 1940

Reinhardt Heydrich establishes a new government department, which is situated in Berlin. The new department is named IV-D-4, whose task was to complete the deportation plans of Jews within the annexed regions of Western Poland and to handle further deportations elsewhere.

01 February 1940

A large scale Soviet assault on the Finnish Mannerheim line is attempted.

05 February 1940

Britain and France agree to send an expeditionary force to help prop up the Finns against their Soviet oppressors.

10 February 1940

The Soviet Forces launch another assault on the Finnish Mannerheim line, this time breaching it in some places. The Finns withdraw to a second defensive line.

10 February 1940

The Nazi authorities order that all Czech shops owned by Jews are to closedown and that they as a people have to cease all economic activity.

11 February 1940

Moscow signs a commercial agreement with Berlin, in which the Soviet Union will supply Germany with oil and agricultural products in exchange for manufactured goods and arms.

12 February 1940

Three Enigma rotors are captured by the crew of HMS Gleaner from the German U-boat U-33.

13 February 1940

Soviet troops in Finland launch an assault on the Finns secondary defensive line and manage to break it.

15 February 1940

In Berlin, Some senior Wehrmacht officers are reported to have complained about the savage

behaviour of the SS in Poland. 16 February 1940

British destroyers spot the German freighter the Altmark, which was transferring British crews, whose ships had been sunk at sea, back to Germany as prisoners of war. The British destroyers gave chase and the Altmark sought safety in Norwegian waters. Britain violated Norway’s neutrality by continuing their pursuit which ended with the capture of the German ship and the releasing of the British seamen. Norway protested about this breach of neutrality but the British government ignored their complaints. Hitler realised that Britain would continue to breach other nations neutrality when it needed to do so and decided that Germany had to control Norwegian waters as she totally relied on this waterway to gain her precious iron ore which was supplied to her by Sweden.

16 February 1940

In Finland, the Red Army breach the Finnish Mannerheim defences.

17 February 1940

British sailors from HMS Cossack rescue 300 British prisoners from the German supply ship, the Altmark within Norwegian waters.

18 February 1940

The Red Army claim to have captured four Finnish towns.

19 February 1940

The British destroyer HMS Daring is sunk just off British mainland.

20 February 1940

Hitler informs General von Falkenhorst, that he is to be given the responsibility of the planning and the execution of the invasion of Norway.

21 February 1940

Richard Gluecks informs Himmler that he has found a suitable site to incarcerate Poles. The site is a former Austro-Hungarian cavalry barracks, on the outskirts of the town of Oswiecim. The site was known to the Germans as Auschwitz.

23 February 1940

The USSR offers Finland its peace terms.

25 February 1940

British planes start a six day intensive mission over Berlin. Dropping leaflets not bombs on the citizens of Berlin. The leaflets, known in the Air Ministry as ‘White bombs’ which warned the German people about the evils of Nazism.

25 February 1940

The first squadron of the Royal Canadian Air Force arrive in Britain.

27 February 1940

British volunteers who have chosen to assist the Finns against The Soviets leave for Finland.

29 February 1940

Norway, Sweden and Denmark lodge complaints against Germany after her U-boats sink neutral shipping.

March 1940

At Katyn, Poland, the Soviets massacre thousands of Polish officers whom had been taken prisoner after The USSR’s invasion of Poland.

01 March 1940

Sumner Welles, President Roosevelt’s special peace envoy meets Hitler and von Ribbentrop in Berlin.

01 March 1940

Hitler issues his new directive ‘Weser Exercise’ for the capture of Denmark and Norway.

04 March 1940

The Allied Expeditionary Force ‘Stratford’ which was earmarked to help Finland in their struggles against the Soviet Union was abandoned before they could leave for Finland.

05 March 1940

The Royal Navy seizes seven Italian ships that was carrying coal to Nazi Germany in the English Channel. Italy protests against this act.

06 March 1940

In London, MPs complain about the government policy of giving Palestinian land to Jews.

07 March 1940

After another Soviet onslaught against the Finnish defences, the Finnish government accepts the chance of a negotiated settlement for peace. The Finnish Prime Minister Risto Ryti travels to Moscow to discuss the peace options.

08 March 1940

A member of the Gestapo shoots a Polish citizen dead in the street for whistling the Polish national anthem.

08 March 1940

Martial law is declared throughout Holland.

09 March 1940

Britain releases the seven Italian ships which the Royal Navy had intercepted carrying coal to Germany.

13 March 1940

Finland signs the Russo-Finnish treaty in Moscow, thus ending the Russo-Finnish war. Finland is forced to cede large tracts of territory along the Baltic coast and leasing the Hango Peninsula to Russia for thirty years.

14 March 1940

Some 500,000 Finns are evacuated from the areas that had been ceded to the USSR as part of the peace terms.

16 March 1940

German bombers attack the British naval base at Scapa Flow.

17 March 1940

Dr Fritz Todt is officially named as ‘Reich Minister for Weapons and Munitions’.

18 March 1940

Hitler meets Mussolini at the Brenner Pass, on the border between Greater Germany and Italy. Mussolini tries in vain to get Hitler to delay his attack on the West.

19 March 1940

In response to the German attack on Scapa Flow, British planes attack the German air base at Hornum, on the island of Sylt. This was the RAF’s first real bombing attack of the war.

20 March 1940

Daladier’s French government collapses and is quickly replaced by one set up by Paul Reynauld.

20 March 1940

French General Maurice-Gustave Gamelin issues orders that if Germany launches her attacks through the Low Countries, then Seven Allied Divisions are to push through Belgium and towards the Dutch border.

22 March 1940

In France, the French counterintelligence officer, Colonel Paul Paillole reports that they Germans are studying routes from the Sedan to Abbeville. He concludes in his report that an attack through Belgium towards the English Channel looks imminent.

28 March 1940

The French Premier, Paul Reynauld flies to London to meet the Supreme War Council. There he urged for the reactivation of the Narvik-Gallivare operation. It was also agreed at the meeting that they had to cut Germany’s oil supply, maybe by attacking the Soviet oil fields in the Caucasus. They also agree not to make a separate peace settlement with Germany.

01 April 1940

In Germany a law in passed which completes the annexation of Austria. Austria is now to be known as Ostmark.

02 April 1940

Hitler gives the order to invade Denmark and Norway.

02 April 1940

In Holland, Dutch troops place on full alert along the Dutch-German border.

02 April 1940

Mussolini orders the mobilisation of all Italians over the age of 14 years old.

03 April 1940

Colonel Oster passes on secret information to the Dutch military attaché colonel Jacobus Sas. Who in turn passed the information onto the Dutch and Norwegian naval Attaches. The Dane at once passed the invasion information onto his superiors in Copenhagen, whilst the Norwegian attaché kept the information to himself. Later Sas was to discover that he was sympathetic to the German cause.

03 April 1940

Ernst Heilmann, a distinguished German Social Democrat, dies in Buchenwald concentration camp. Heilmann, of Jewish descent was deputy of the German Reichstag from 1928 to 1933. He was arrested soon after the Nazis came to power. He was confined in several concentration camps prior to his death. He was subjected to harsh treatment. On one occasion, he was attacked by bloodhounds that mangled his arms and hands. The death report stated that he had died of weakness from old age. He was only 59 years old.

05 April 1940

The Soviet secret police takes groups of Polish officers, whom had been held as prisoners of war after the Polish campaign, to a small wooded area near the village of Katyn. It was here that the Polish officers were shot and dumped in a mass grave.

08 April 1940

The British initiate Operation Wilfred. The mining the Norwegian coastal waters, they also inform the Norwegian government of their mining of their waters. The Norwegians lodge a complaint. The British claim that the mining is to prevent Germany from acquiring precious iron ore that was being transported through Norwegian waters.

08 April 1940

A British plane locates a German naval force off Norway heading west. In response to the report, the British Admiralty, believing that the Germans are attempting to break out into the Atlantic, decides to send the Home Fleet after them.

08 April 1940

In the evening, Norwegian coastal batteries open fire on German warships.

09 April 1940

Hitler launches Operation Weser against Denmark and Norway at 0410 hours. Germany claims the invasion was necessary to prevent Britain from invading her. At around 0500 hours, the Norwegians the German heavy cruiser Blucher near Oslo. At 0600 hours, German planes drop leaflets on the Danish Capital announcing German intentions to occupy their country as well as Norway, in an attempt to prevent British plans coming to fruition and at 0620 hours, King Christian X of Denmark announces to the nation that their country has surrendered to Germany.

10 April 1940

Five British destroyers enter the harbour at Narvik and sink two of the German ten destroyers.

11 April 1940

An Allied Expeditionary Force leaves for Narvik in Norway from the Clyde.

12 April 1940

The Allies send some 23 Blenheim bombers, 36 Wellington bombers and 24 Hampden bombers to attack German ships off Kristianland. Only one bomber finds its target. Nine bombers are lost in the skirmish to a loss of only five German planes.

13 April 1940

The British launch Operation Gardening when they send Hampden bombers to lay mines in Danish and German waters.

13 April 1940

President Roosevelt protests against Germany’s invasion of Denmark and Norway.

14 April 1940

The British Expeditionary Forces land near Trondheim, Namsos and at Narvik in Norway

14 April 1940

The Soviet Foreign Minister Vyadieslav Molotov that Russia has a vital interest in Sweden remaining neutral.

14 April 1940

French intelligence are notified by the Belgians that the Germans seem to have turned their attention to the Ardennes area

18 April 1940

Allied troops land off Andalsnes in Norway.

19 April 1940

The Swiss government issues instructions for mobilisation in case of a German invasion of Switzerland.

20 April 1940

Heinrich Himmler gets Hitler’s go-ahead to form Germany’s first non-German Waffen SS unit (SS-Standarte Nordland) for volunteers in Norway and Denmark.

29 April 140

President Roosevelt asks Mussolini to assist him in halting the war in Europe.

30 April 1940

The Nazis seal the Jewish Ghetto of Lodz.

30 April 1940

Samuel Harden Church, President of the Carnegie Institute in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, USA, offers a one million dollar reward for the capture of Adolf Hitler in a letter to the New York Times.

30 April 1940

SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Rudolf Hoess is appointed commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. At this stage Auschwitz was not the main killing centre that it would one day become.

30 April 1940

The French military attaché in Berne, Switzerland passes on information to the French intelligence services stating that a German attack on the West has been set for the 8th to the 10th of May 1940, focussing on the Sedan.

May 1940

British cryptographers break the Germans Enigma codes which they had only changed three weeks previous.

01 May 1940

French counterintelligence in Switzerland confirms the report dated 30 April 1940, stating that the German assault on the West will take place between the 8th and 10th of May 1940 and focussing on the Sedan. At the same time, Paul Thummel informs the French intelligence via the Haig that Germany plans to launch an attack on the West on the 10th May 1940. Thummel was a Czech agent working for the German military intelligence.

01 May 1940

The Germans change the key settings on their Enigma machines.

03 May 1940

The Allied Expeditionary Forces in Norway withdraws from Namsos and Andalsnes.

07 May 1940

The British Admiral Sir Roger Keyes leads a Commons revolt against Prime Minister Chamberlain after the debacle of Norway.

07 May 1940

The French supreme commander restores leave for the army as Hitler sets 10th May as the date for operation Sichelschnitt (Cut of the Sickle) which would entail 45 German divisions would advance through the Ardennes.

09 May 1940

At 2150 hours, General Hans Oster warns the Dutch military attaché in Berlin for the third time in a week that a full scale offensive against the West is imminent.

09 May 1940

Britain occupies the Danish possessions of Iceland and the Faroe Islands to prevent them falling into German hands.

09 May 1940

A Bill in introduced in the British Parliament which proposes the death penalty for sabotage acts.

10 May 1940

Britain begins to intern all German and Austrian men between the ages of 16 to 50.

10 May 1940

Sometime between 0300 and 0400 hours, Adolf Hitler arrives at his bunker near Aachen to direct Operation Fall Gelb (Case Yellow), the assault on the West. Operation Sichelschnitt is launched. At 0400 hours as the Luftwaffe attacks targets in the West and at 0430 hours, German parachutists and other airborne units secure key bridges in Holland and Belgium. At sunrise 77 German troops land on top of Belgium’s impregnable fortress of Eban Emael and within twenty minutes has it neutralised. At 0500 hours 76 German divisions invade the Low Countries. The British reply by sending 32 bombers against the advancing German columns in Luxembourg. The Germans bring down 13 of the bombers and all the others are damaged. At 1800 hours British Prime Minister Chamberlain resigns from office and King George VI asks Winston Churchill to form a new government

11 May 1940

In Luxembourg, 8 British bombers attack a German column, 7 bombers are shot down and the 8th

crashed on landing in England. 11 May 1940

Hermann Goering, Chief of the Luftwaffe demand that Sweden allows German artillery and supplies are allowed access to Norway via Swedish territory. Sweden refuses.

12 May 1940

The Germans shoot down 7 out of the 9 British Blenheim bombers that attacked their column on the Maastrict-Tongres road. the Allies attack bridges over the Albert Canal with 5 British bombers. They manage to destroy one bridge but they lose 4 planes trying. In an attempt to destroy bridges and roads in Maastricht, 10 out of 24 British Blenheim bombers are lost.

13 May 1940

The Luftwaffe concentrates it attack on Rotterdam, many civilians die in the raids.

13 May 1940

General Erwin Rommel, commander of the 7th Panzer Division crosses the Meuse River at Dinant and General Heinz Guderian’s XIX Armoured Corps crosses the Meuse River at Sedan.

13 May 1940

The Dutch queen Wilhelmina arrives in London as an exile.

14 May 1940

Some 71 British bombers bomb German bridgeheads over the Meuse River at the cost of losing 40 of their planes.

14 May 1940

In Holland, all Dutch soldiers are ordered to cease fighting.

15 May 1940

In Holland, the German’s occupy The Hague.

15 May 1940

The French Premier Paul Reynaud telephones the British Prime Minister to inform him that France has been defeated. He also request that Britain send as many troops and planes as they

can, but Churchill decides to go to France to asses the situation for himself he also gives the go-ahead for the RAF to bomb the Ruhr area of Germany. 15 May 1940

The Dutch army surrenders to the Germans.

15 May 1940

The French supreme commander General Gamelin orders a retreat from Belgium.

16 May 1940

President Roosevelt asks Congress for 285 million dollars for defence spending.

16 May 1940

The RAF sends an extra 10 fighter squadrons to help France, with 6 of them operating out of Kent.

17 May 1940

12 British Blenheim bombers attack German columns near Gembloux. 11 are shot down.

17 May 1940

Hitler’s Panzers reach the Serre River in France where they stop.

17 May 1940

48 British bombers attack the oil refineries at Hamburg.

18 May 1940

The Panzer forces that had stopped at the Serre River start moving again, this time heading north, away from Paris.

18 May 1940 19/20 May 1940

Sweden decides not to sell arms to Germany. In Paris General Maxime Weygand replaces General Maurice Gamelin as Allied Commander-inChief and orders an attack on General Guderian’s southern flank.

19 May 1940

The Italian Ambassador, Dino Alfieri presents Hermann Goering with the Collar of the Order of the Annunciation, which he had been coveting for some time.

20 May 1940

German troops reach the sea near Abbeville in France thus splitting the Allied forces and trapping many enemy soldiers in a pocket.

23 May 1940

In France, Boulogne falls to the Germans and set siege to Calais.

24 May 1940

Canada sends four destroyers, Restigouche, St Laurent, Skeena and Fraser to aid the Royal Navy.

24 May 1940

Field Marshal von Rundstedt issues orders for his panzer tank division to halt their advance. This halt was due to maintenance problems and to allow the infantry and supplies to catch up.

24 May 1940

The last of the British Expeditionary forces withdraws from Norway.

25 May 1940

In France, British commander Gort orders his troops to head north so that they can embark for England.

25 May 1940

Himmler visits Hitler at Felsennest and obtains permission to recruit Belgians as well as Dutchmen into his Waffen-SS. He also gives Hitler a memorandum entitled ‘Some Thoughts on the Treatment of Foreign Populations in the East’.

27 May 1940

Field Marshal von Rundstedt orders his troops to advance again.

27/28 May 1940

Belgium surrenders to Germany.

27 May 1940

The evacuation of Allied troops from Dunkirk to England begins. During the dogfights over Dunkirk between the 27th and 30th May, the RAF shoot down some 179 Luftwaffe planes to a loss of only 29 between 27th and

27 May 1940

A SS Totenkopf unit murders men from the 2nd Royal Norfolks regiment at a farm near Paradis near Bethune after they had surrendered to them.

28 May- 08 June 1940

Dr Rudolf Lange and is special commando unit murders some 1,558 mentally disabled people in specially built gas vans in the east as part of Hitler’s T4 Programme (Nazi euthanasia policy) Lange would eventually become the first commandant of the death camp at Chelmno.

Early June 1940

Thirty German prisoners from the Nazi concentration camp of Sachsenhausen are transferred to Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland as the camps first Kapo’s. Kapo’s are fellow Prisoners, who are given a privileged role within the camp system. Their job is to assist the camp authorities in maintaining order and to help in the day-to-day running of the camp. A lot of Kapo’s were more feared than the SS, and their brutality against fellow inmates were at times worse than the jailers.

June 1940

Germany sets up its first specialized night-fighter plane unit.

01 June 1940

The Luftwaffe bomb Marseilles in France.

01 June 1940

Luftwaffe planes sink 4 allied destroyers and a passenger ship at Dunkirk.

03 June 1940

German forces now head south towards Paris.

03/04 June 1940

The last of the Allied troops caught up in the hell that was Dunkirk is evacuated. Some 338,000 troops reached England safely.

04 June 1940

The German battle cruisers Scharnhorst, Gneisenau and Hipper set out from Kiel for Harsted in Norway to attack the Allied Forces still at the Port City.

05 June 1940

The French General Beaufrere surrenders the remaining French troops that were defending Dunkirk during the evacuation surrenders to the Germans.

05 June 1940

The British government puts a ban on strikes.

05 June 1940

In Paris Brigadier-General Charles de Gaulle is made Under Secretary of War.

06 June 1940

The British Prime Minister proposes that Britain develop a parachute corps with some 5,000 men.

08 June 1940

The French town of Rouen falls into German hands as the last of the Allied forces leave Norway.

09 June 1940

Norway surrenders to Germany as King Haakon flees to England.

10 June 1940

The French government leaves Paris for Tours as the Germans come within 35 miles of Paris.

10 June 1940

Benito Mussolini, believing that he is missing out on the spoils of war decides to try to cash in by declaring war on France and Britain.

11 June 1940

The French town of Reims falls to the Germans as Paris is declared an open city.

11 June 1940

34 British bombers attack bases in Italy from their airfields in the Channel Island.

12 June 1940

Winston Churchill meets with the French General Weygand at Tours.

13 June 1940

Franco of Spain changes his country’s status from neutral to non-belligerent.

14 June 1940

German troops enter Paris and march triumphantly down the Champs-Elysees.

14 June 1940

British General Brooke in Brest, France, orders Canadian forces to pull out of France. Much of their equipment had to be left behind.

14 June 1940

First deportations to the Auschwitz concentration camp begin. 728 non-Jewish Poles from a prison in Tarnow (about 110km east of Auschwitz) and 3 Jews (Emil Wieder, Issac Holzer whom were both lawyers and Maximilian Rosenbusch who was the director of the Hebrew school in Tarnow).

15 June 1940

The Canadians lose their first merchant ship that was sailing with convoy HX-48 across the Atlantic to England at the hands of the German submarine U-38. No lives were lost during this sinking.

16 June 1940

The Reynaud government collapses and the aged Marshal of France, Philippe Petain becomes France’s new Premier and immediately sues for peace with the Germans. Hitler tells the French that he will have to consult his ally Mussolini first.

17 June 1940

Knowing that the new Premier of France wishes to capitulate to the Germans, Churchill proposes that France’s General de Gaulle is recognized as being the true voice of France.

17 June 1940

The RAF launches 138 bombers against targets in Germany. Only one plane fails to return home.

17 June 1940

The Allied ship Lancastria is sunk whilst evacuating troops and refugees. Some 2,800 are feared dead.

18 June 1940

The Prime Minister of Canada, Mackenzie King introduces the National Resources Mobilization Act in the Canadian parliament. The bill requires all Canadians to register for national service and gives the government of Canada control of Canadian property for the duration of the war.

18 June 1940

The Swedish Minister in Berlin is told by the German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop that if Sweden still resists Germany’s wish to use the Swedish railway network to transport troops and supplies to Norway, it may have to face dire consequences. With this threat Sweden allows the Germans to transport their troops and equipment through Sweden to Norway.

18 June 1940

Hitler meets his ally Mussolini in Munich and informs him of his intentions concerning Frances capitulation. He also tells him that the Jews of Europe are going to be settled on the island of Madagascar as soon as the war is over.

18 June 1940

General de Gaulle broadcasts an appeal to French officers, and men using the BBC radio in London join him in Britain to carry on the fight against Germany.

19 June 1940

The RAF attack German airfields at Rouen and Amiens. All 30 bombers return safely home.

20 June 1940

Bomber Command in Britain receives a directive from the Air Ministry instructing it to focus future attacks on German aircraft.

20 June 1940

The RAF attacks German airfields at Rouen and Schipol. All 47 bombers return home.

20 June 1940

The first Australian and New Zealand troops arrive in Britain.

22 June 1940

The Battle for France is over as the French formally surrenders to Germany. The signing ceremony is held in the Forest de Compiegne and in the same sleeper car that was used to accept Germany’s surrender after the First World War in 1918. Field Marshal Keitel signs for Germany whilst General Charles Huntziger signs for France. After the signing ceremony, Hitler orders the site to be demolished. In Hitler’s eyes, the German humiliation of 1918 has finally been undone.

22 June 1940

The Royal Assent is given to the National Resources Mobilization Act that had been approved by the Canadian government on the 18th June 1940. All males over the age of 16 are now required to register for national service.

23 June 1940

Now that the Battle for France is over, Hitler orders that plans be drafted for the invasion of the Soviet Union.

23 June 1940

Hitler flies into Paris at 5.30am accompanied by Wilhelm Keitel and Albert Speer. After visiting the Eiffel Tower, La Madeleine, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier at the Arc de Triomphe, Napoleon’s tomb as well as a few other land marks, heads back to the airport. His visit lasted barely three hours.

24 June 1940

France signs an armistice with Italy.

25 June 1940

The Canadian cruiser the Fraser, which while en route from St-Jean-de-Luz in France to Plymouth in England collides in the Bay of Biscay with the British cruiser Calcutta and sinks killing 47 men.

25 June 1940

In Germany, troops are issued with English phrase books in preparation for an invasion of the British Isles.

28 June 1940

Soviet troops invade the Rumanian provinces’ of Bukovina and Bessarabia.

July 1940

The German Commander-in-Chief Walter Brauchitsch orders the men under his command not to interfere with the agencies which has been instructed to carry out the racial struggle in any of occupied territories.

01 July 1940

In France, Petain’s government moves to Vichy.

02 July 1940

The Canadian destroyer St. Laurent rescues 857 survivors from the Arandora Star which had been torpedoed.

02 July 1940

Hitler orders that plans be prepared for the invasion of Britain.

03 July 1940

The French fleet at Mers-el-Kebir, in Oran Bay, Algeria is sunk by the British to prevent them being used by Germany.

04 July 1940

Bomber Command receives new instructions from the British Air Ministry. They are now to focus their attention on German shipping.

05 July 1940

The Canadian merchant ship Magog is shelled and torpedoed of the coast of Ireland.

July 1940

The Luftwaffe supremo Hermann Goering orders that the night-fighter units to be increased to division strength.

08 July 1940

The Merchant ship Humber Arm is torpedoed whilst sailing in convoy HX-53 in the North Atlantic by a German U-boat.

09 July 1940

The RAF lose 8 Blenheim bombers out of a total of 12 as German Me 109’s and 110’s attack them after their attack on German aircraft at Stavanger.

10 July 1940

The Nazi puppet ‘Vichy’ government is established to administer the non-occupied Southern area of France.

10 July 1940

Just after 1 pm, British radar stations along the southeast detected a build up of German aircraft just behind Calais. The RAF at Biggin Hill, which was based south-east of London sent a group of fighters up in intercept them, and other fighters from Manston in Kent where dispatched as reinforcements as well as 9 other fighters from Croydon in London. The German target that day was the large convoy of coasters sailing from Dover to Dungeness. 120 German planes where in the sky to do battle. After a brief dogfight the Germans withdrew, after sinking only one of the ships below. All but one of the RAF planes returned home. The first stage of the Battle of Britain had begun.

10 July 1940

President Roosevelt as the US Congress for 4.8 billion dollars to be spent building up America’s military.

10 July 1940

German aircraft sink the Canadian merchant ship Waterloo close to Great Yarmouth in the North Sea.

10 July 1940

The British Union of Fascists are banned in Britain.

16 July 1940

Hitler issues a provisional directive for the invasion of Britain to his armed forces.

16 July 1940

The French government in Vichy strips Jews of their citizenship.

19 July 1940

Adolf Hitler promotes Field Marshal Hermann Goering to Reich’s Marshal of the Greater German Reich, he also offers Britain a chance for peace during his speech in the Reichstag

19 July 1940

In Britain, General Sir Alan Brooke becomes commander-in-chief of the British home forces.

20 July 1940

The British government bans the buying and selling of new cars.

21 July 1940

Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia vote to become part of the USSR.

22 July 1940

Britain reject Hitler’s peace offer as “a mere summons to capitulate.

25 July 1940

The German’s torpedo a French ship in the English Channel whilst carrying French sailors to Britain.

30 July 1940

The British government states that all of Europe and North Africa are to be blockaded.

Late July 1940

The German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop proposes a plan to kidnap the former king of England, (Edward VIII) now known as the Duke of Windsor whilst he is in Portugal.

31 July 1940

After meeting with Keitel, Jodl, Brauchitsch and Halder, Hitler decide that the assault on the USSR should take place next May.

31 July 1940

The French government in Vichy passes a law stating that any French citizens joining foreign armies will face the death sentence.

August 1940

With the fall of France, the British Intelligence unit that had been deciphering German Police codes in France, move into the main building at Bletchley Park in England.

01 August 1940

Hitler issues a decree to his armed forces stating that all preparations for Operation Sealion (the Invasion of Britain) be completed by September 1940)

02 August 1940

Camillien Houde, the Mayor of Montreal in Canada publicly urges people not to register for national service.

02 August 1940

In London, Lord Beaverbrook is appointed to the War Cabinet.

04 August 1940

The merchant ship Geraldine Mary, sailing with convoy HX-60 is torpedoed by a German U-boat.

04 August 1940

The Italians in East Africa attack the British Somaliland from Abyssinia.

05 August 1940

Camillien Houde, the Mayor of Montreal in Canada is arrested under the Defense of Canada Regulations and is imprisoned at Camp Petawawa in Ontario.

07 August 1940

Germany incorporates Alsace-Lorraine and Luxembourg into the Reich.

08 August 1940

In London, Winston Churchill signs an alliance with de Gaulle’s Free France movement.

12 January 1940

A revolt against Italian rule flares up in Albania.

13 August 1940

The Luftwaffe launches Operation Aldertag (Eagle Day) against Britain in preparation of Hitler’s plans for the invasion of Britain. The date had originally been set for 10th August 1940 but owing to bad weather had to be delayed until today’s date. British radar stations and RAF airfields are the primary targets.

13 August 1940

The RAF bomb a crucial aqueduct over the River Ems in Germany. Out of the 5 bombers used three return home whilst another 12 Blenheim bombers attack Hemsteds airfield in Holland with only one plane returning.

15 August 1940

The Luftwaffe sends 20 JU88 aircraft to attack the RAF base at Driffield in Yorkshire. They manage to destroy 10 Whitley planes on the ground.

17 August 1940

Germany declares a total blockade of Great Britain.

19 August 1940

British Somaliland falls to the Italians.

22 August 1940

The Canadian merchant ship is attack and bombed by the Luftwaffe whilst sailing in the South Irish Sea just off Milford Haven.

24 August 1940

London is bombed by the Luftwaffe for the first time since the war began. Two Luftwaffe bombers had lost their flight leaders by the time they reached the Thames. With heavy flak, the crews panicked and dropped their bomb load on the city. As soon as Hitler and Goering heard of the bombing they flew into a rage and a telegram was dispatched to the Luftwaffe commanders…the telegram read: ‘An immediate report is required identifying those crews who dropped bombs within the perimeter of London: Luftwaffe High Command will itself undertake the punishment of each aircraft captain involved. They will be posted to infantry regiments’.

25 August 1940

In retaliation for the bombing of London by the Luftwaffe the previous night, the RAF send 80 bombers against Berlin.

28 August 1940

In Holland, the College of Secretaries-General is told by the German authorities that they are not to appoint or promote any member of staff that has Jewish blood within the civil service.

28-29 August 1940

The RAF attack Berlin killing 10 and injuring 29. These attacks would become more frequent as time moved on.

29 August 1940

The Italian air force bomb the Suez Canal.

30 August 1940

In a fit of rage at the RAF’s bombing attack on Berlin a few nights ago; Hitler rescinds his order not to bomb London orders Goering to start a bombing campaign against London.

September 1940

Himmler orders all SS personnel to see the anti-Semitic film Jud Suss (The Jew Suss) as a way to prepare his men for ‘special duties’ still to come. The film is based on the 18 th century Jewish financier Joseph Suss. In the film Suss is executed and all Jews are banned from Wurttemberg.

01 September 1940

The RAF Bomb Munich for the first time in the war.

02 September 1940

Germany orders that France pay them 400 million francs (£2.3 million) to help maintain German occupying forces.

03 September 1940

In France, anti-Jewish Statutes are enacted.

04 September 1940

Hitler announces that British cities will be attacked night and day.

05 September 1940

The RAF attacks targets across the Channel that could be used for invasion.

05 September 1940

A Royal Navy sub sink the German ship Marion in the Baltic with reported loss of some 4,000 German troops.

06 September 1940

King Carol of Bucharest is made to resign in favour of his son Michael after his pro-German Premier resigns.

07 September 1940

The Luftwaffe launch a bombing campaign against London…This is the beginning of the Blitz. Air Marshal Dowding and his staff welcome this change of tactics, as their air force had been seriously over-stretched and knew that his RAF needed time to recover.

07 September 1940

In Britain, the codeword ‘Cromwell’ is passed nationwide, church bells are to be rung out in warning that a German invasion was underway.

09 September 1940

The RAF bomb Hamburg.

11 September 1940

The Luftwaffe at London again and this time causing damage to Buckingham Palace and St Paul’s Cathedral.

12/13 September 1940

In an attempt to seize the Suez Canal, Italy invades Egypt.

14 September 1940

In Holland. Jews are banned from various markets in Amsterdam.

16 September 1940

In Egypt, the invading Italian army stops to await supplies at Sidi Barrani

15 September 1940

The Luftwaffe sends some 1700 planes against Britain.

15 September 1940

The Canadian merchant ship Kenordoc which was en route to Bristol was torpedoed by a German U-boat in mid-Atlantic.

18 September 1940

After the failure of the Luftwaffe to win the air war against the RAF, Hitler postpones Operation Sealion. indefinitely.

20 September 1940

In Rome, Mussolini meets the German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop to discuss the division of North Africa.

22 September 1940

The Germans sink the evacuee ship City of Benares with a reported loss of 306 people in the Atlantic.

23 September 1940

The Royal Navy lands a force of Free French troops lead by General De Gaulle at Dakar in Senegal.

24 September 1940

The British King in London introduces the George Cross and the George Medal for valour and outstanding gallantry.

25 September 1940

The German merchant ship Weser is captured just off Manzillo, Mexico by the RCN armed merchant cruiser Prince Robert.

25 September 1940

General De Gaulle stops his Free French attack on Dakar in Senegal.

26 September 1940

Some 46 survivors are found after their ship City of Benares was sunk by the Germans in the Atlantic a few days earlier.

30 September 1940

In Holland, a circular is sent to local authorities defining anyone who has a Jewish grandparent as also being Jewish.

October 1940

The new Vichy French government under Marshal Petain proclaims under a new statute that all Jews are forbidden to work within certain professions.

01 October 1940

Finland signs a military and economic treaty with Germany in Helsinki.

03 October 1940

In London, Neville Chamberlain resigns from the government on health reasons.

04 October 1940

Hitler meets with Mussolini for three hours at the Brenner Pass.

05 October 1940

In Holland all civil servants are forced to sign ‘Aryan attestation’.

12 October 1940

The German U-boat 101 torpedoes and sinks the merchant ship Saint-Malo as she travelled in convoy in the North Atlantic.

07 October 1940

The German collaborationist Vichy government in France repeals an 1870 decree giving Algerian Jews French citizenship.

07 October 1940

Germany and Italy invade Rumania.

09 October 1940

Winston Churchill is elected leader of the Tory Party after Neville Chamberlain’s resignation.

12 October 1940

Axis troops occupy Bucharest in Rumania.

16 October 1940

The merchant ship Trevisa is sunk by the German U-boat 124 just south of Iceland as she travelled in Convoy SC-7 to Aberdeen in Scotland.

18 October 1940

The Vichy government in France bans Jews from the public services and from high places in industry and the press.

21 October 1940

The RAF bomb Berlin causing considerable damage.

22 October 1940

Due to poor visibility the Royal Canadian destroyer Margaree collides with the freighter Port Fairy some 400 miles west of Ireland. This was the first convoy mission Margaree had been

on. 140 seamen lose their lives due the accident. 22 October 1940

The Germans in Holland issue an order that all Jewish businesses be registered at the Wirtschaftsprufstelle.

22 October 1940

More than 15,000 (Check amount) German Jews are deported from the Rhineland and sent to internment camps situated in occupied France.

22 October 1940

The Nazis order all Jewish businesses in occupied Netherlands to be registered.

23 October 1940

At 1500 hours, Hitler meets with Spain’s Franco at Hendaye on the Franco-Spanish border. Here Hitler tries to woe the Spanish into declaring war on Britain.

28 October 1940

Italy invades Greece from occupied Albania.

30 October 1930

The Vichy government calls on all Frenchmen and women to collaborate to help maintain French unity.

November 1940

In Switzerland, the government bans the Communist party and the pro-Nazi National Movement organisation.

04 November 1940

Greek troops push back the Italian invaders.

06 November 1940

The RN destroyer Harvester and the Canadian destroyer Ottawa attack and sink the Italian submarine Faa di Bruno off Ireland.

09 November 1940

The ex-British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain dies of cancer.

09 November 1940

The Vichy government bans trade unions and employers organisations.

12-13 November 1940

Hitler meets the Soviet Foreign Minister Molotov in Berlin.

14/15 November 1940

The Luftwaffe attack Coventry which results in the death of some 380 and wounding 865 people.

15 November 1940

The RAF launches a bombing attack on targets in Hamburg. All aircraft returned safely home.

15 November 1940

The Nazis Seal off the Warsaw Ghetto.

16 November 1940

The RAF drops some 2,000 bombs on the German city of Hamburg.

19 November 1940

In Warsaw, a Christian who threw a sack of bread over the wall into the Warsaw Ghetto is shot dead.

20 November 1940

The Luftwaffe bomb Birmingham and other towns in the English Midlands.

20 November 1940

Hungary joins the Axis.

21 November 1940

In Holland, a circular is issued banning all Jews from holding public office.

24 November 1940

In Bratislava, the Slovakian government joins the Axis.

28 November 1940

Seven Italian warships are torpedoed by the British just off Sardinia.

29 November 1940

The Luftwaffe bomb Liverpool.

30 November 1940

The Luftwaffe bomb Southampton.

December 1940

Bulgaria and Yugoslavia reject an invitation to join the Tripartite Pact.

Early December 1940

British cryptographers break one of the Enigma keys that is being used by the SS EconomicAdministrative Main Office (WVHA). The WVHA organisation oversees concentration camps, labour camps, extermination camps and a variety of SS economic enterprises.

December 1940

The 17 year old Hans Stark, after serving in an SS Deaths Head unit as a guard at the concentration camp of Oranienburg near Berlin is transferred to the Auschwitz concentration camp in occupied Poland as head of Admissions.

December 1940

The RAF accidentally bombs the railway station in Basil, Switzerland.

01 December 1940

The Italian submarine torpedoes the RCN destroyer Saguenay 300 miles west of Ireland, though the ship does not sink she does however lose 21 men in the attack.

06 December 1940

Marshal Pietro Badoglio is sacked as Italian chief of staff after the Italians poor performance in Greece and Albania.

16 December 1940

The RAF sends 134 bombers to attack Mannheim in Germany.

18 December 1940

Hitler orders preparations for Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the Soviet Union.

22 December 140

In London, Anthony Eden becomes Foreign Secretary as Lord Halifax is made ambassador to the United States.

23 December 1940

The Greeks capture some 800 Italian troops after seizing Chimera in Albania.

1941 1941

Blue Division (volunteer Spanish force) which fought with the Germans during the German invasion of the Soviet Union is formed. So called because of the colour of the Falangist Party uniforms that its members initially wore.

01 January 1941

The RAF attack targets at Taranto and Naples in Italy as well as launching attacks against axis bases within Libya.

03 January 1941

Australian troops begin an assault on Italian troops at Bardia in Libya.

04 January 1941

The German actress Marlene Dietrich becomes a citizen of the United States.

05 January 1941

Australian troops capture Bardia in Lydia taking some 25,000 Italian prisoners including six generals.

07 January 1941

Allied troops capture Tobruk airport in Libya from the Italians.

07 January 1941

In Holland, the Dutch Cinema Association bans all Jews from attending cinemas.

09 January 1941

The German Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop is deeply shocked and disturbed when he discovers That Hitler is planning an attack on the Soviet Union. Ribbentrop tries unsuccessfully to persuade Hitler to strengthen his Pact with the Soviets instead of going to war with them.

10 January 1941

Italian and German planes attack British bases on the Island of Malta.

10 January 1941

In German occupied Holland; all Jews are forced to register.

14 January 1941

Romania’s Regent General Ion Antonescu agrees to allow his country to be used as a launching pad for German troops to attack Greece in Operation Marita.

20 January 1941

In Washington Roosevelt is inaugurated for his third term as President of the United States.

21 January 1941

In Rumania, the Fascist ‘Iron Guard’ attempt a coup but fail.

24 January 1941

Hitler calls a meeting with Goering, Colonel Hans Jeschonnek and General Kurt Student, the commander of the Parachute Division at the Berghof to discuss airborne operations in Greece and also the island of Crete.

30 January 1941

The Allied forces within Libya capture Derna after a fierce three-day battle.

February 1941

Stalin appoints General Dimitri Pavlov as Chief of Staff.

01 February 1941

In Holland, the authorities introduce a numerous clausus to limit the number of Jewish students attending Dutch education facilities.

05 February 1941

The German controlled authorities in occupied Holland orders that all doctors that are of Jewish decent declare themselves.

08 February 1941

General Metaxas, the Greek Prime Minister dies and is replaced by M. Koryzis.

12 February 1941

The Germans seal off the new Jewish Quarter of Amsterdam.

19 February 1941

Members of the Grune Polizei and volunteers from the Dutch Nazi NSB (National-Socialistische Beweging) movement raid the Jewish owned Koco cafe in Amsterdam. The police and NSB members were sprayed with ammonia and in return they police started shooting. The owners, and some of their customers who had incited the attack on the police and NSB members were arrested. After torture one of theowners was executed by firing squad.

13 February 1941

In Amsterdam a Jewish Council is set up by the German authorities.

22-23 February 1941

In Amsterdam, the Jewish Quarter is raided and 425 young men are arrested as retaliation for the attack on the police and NSB members as they raided Koco’s cafe a few days earlier.

25 February 1941

An anti-Nazi strike in Amsterdam takes place in protest to Jews being arrested.

01 March 1941

The Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler visits Auschwitz to inspect progress of the concentration camp and orders its commandant Rudolf Hoess to enlarge the camp and to build a new compound at Birkenau (Auschwitz 2) to accommodate some 100,000 Soviet prisoners-of-war. He has to also prepare facilities for IG Farben running its Buna plant just three miles east of the camp. This part of the Auschwitz complex would become known as Monowitz (Auschwitz 3)

11 March 1941

The US Congress passes the pro-British Lend-Lease Act.

13 March 1941

In one of Hitler’s Barbarossa Directives (Invasion of the USSR), Himmler and his SS are given special instructions to liquidate all political enemies in the Soviet Union and are given total independence to achieve this aim.

17 March 1941

In Germany, Franz Halder, Chief of the Army General Staff records in his diary that in Russia, ‘force must be used in its most brutal form’ and that ‘The intelligentsia, put in by Stalin must be exterminated’.

27 March 1941

Hitler hears of the coup in Yugoslavia. At first he believes it to be a practical joke but when he realises that the pro-German government had indeed fallen in a coup Hitler flew into a rage and decides to destroy Yugoslavia.

27 March 1941

The camp commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, Rudolf Hoess, meets with representatives of IG Farben to discuss the new camp at Monowitz (Auschwitz 3). IG Farben agree to pay the SS 3 Reichsmarks per unskilled slave worker and 4 Reichsmarks per Skilled slave worker.

30 March 1941

Generaloberst Franz Halder, Chief of the Army General Staff records a speech given by Hitler to his Wehrmacht leadership. ‘Struggle between to weltanschaungen (world outlooks). Devastating assessment of Bolshevism: it is the equivalent of social delinquency. Communism is a tremendous danger for the future. We must get away from the standpoint of soldierly comradeship. The Communist is from first to last no comrade. It is a war of extermination. If we do not regard it as much, we may defeat the enemy, but in thirty years time we will again be confronted by the Communist enemy…The struggle will be very different from that in the West. In the East toughness now means mildness in the future. The leaders must make sacrifices and overcome their scruples’.

End March 1941

Hermann Goering, head of the Luftwaffe and Hitler’s economic Four-Year plan discusses the problems and solutions to the Jewish problem in the east especially concerning the Soviet Union with Reinhard Heydrich.

April 1941

Himmler appoints Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski as Higher Police Leader for Southeast (Silesia)

April 1941

In preparation for the invasion of the Soviet Union, Reinhard Heydrich starts a recruiting drive for

his Einsatzgruppen (special groups). The main functions of these units are to liquidate all political and racial opponents’ of Hitler’s Third Reich within the conquered areas of the USSR. 06 April 1941

Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece.

08 April 1941

Daluege discusses with Himmler potential roles for his Order Police in the forthcoming attack on the Soviet Union.

13 April 1941

The Yugoslavian capital Belgrade is captured by German troops.

15 April 1941

General Lohr, GOC 4th Air Fleet submit’s his plan for an airborne attack against the Allied forces lactated on the island of Crete to Hermann Goering.

15 April 1941

All Jews in Amsterdam are ordered to hand in their radio sets to the authorities.

15 April 1941

Himmler orders Order Police Battalion 322 to prepare for special duties in the east.

16 April 1941

Hermann Goering discusses General Lohr’s plan for an attack on the Allied forces based in Crete with Hitler.

16 April 1941

Himmler, Heydrich, Wolff, Daluege and Hans Juttner meet with Eduard Wagner, QuartermasterGeneral to discuss the remaining issues between the SS and police squads prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union.

17 April 1941

The Yugoslavian army capitulates to the German forces.

21 April 1941

Hitler meets with Goering and General Student, Commander of XI Air Corps and tells them that though the plan to attack the Allied forces on the island of Crete is sound, he believes that it is not practical. Goering tries his best to persuade Hitler to go with the plan but to no avail.

24 April 1940

In Poland, the Nazis seal off the Jewish Ghetto of Lublin.

25 April 1941

Hitler decides to go with the plan to attack the allied forces on Crete and issues ‘Directive 28’ ‘An operation to use Crete as an air base to attack British forces in the Mediterranean’

31 July 1941

Heydrich receives authorisation from Goering to pursue the ‘final solution to the Jewish question. In completion of the task entrusted to you in the edict dated January 24th 1939 of solving the Jewish question by means of migration or evacuation in the most convenient way possible,

given the present conditions. I herewith charge you with making all necessary preparations with regard to organizational, practical and financial aspects for an overall solution of the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe. Insofar as the competences of other central organization are affected, these should be involved. I further charge you with submitting to me promptly an overall plan of the preliminary organizational, practical and financial measures for the execution of the intended final solution of the Jewish question. May 1941

Himmler removes Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski as Higher SS and Police Leader for Southeast (Silesia) and orders him to report to him on 26 May 1941.

01 May 1941

In Holland, all Jewish doctors are banned from practising medicine on non Jews.

10 May 1941

After bailing out of his Me-110 fighter plane over Scotland, Rudolf Hess is captured by a local farm worker and handed to the army. Initially he gave his name as Captain Alfred Horn and claimed to have an important message for the Duke of Hamilton. Hess had flown on a secret mission to try to negotiate peace with Britain.

13 May 1941

The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) announces the capture of Rudolf Hess. As soon as Hitler hears of Hess capture he flies into an uncontrollable rage and claims that Hess was insane and had no authorization to go to Britain seeking peace.

13 May 1941

The German High Command (OKW) issues it’s ‘Order Concerning the exercise of Military Jurisdiction and Procedures in the Area Barbarossa, and Special Military Measures’. The order allows soldiers to shoot any civilians that are deemed a threat to German rule, and sets out a ‘collective punishment’ for areas where insidious and malicious attacks are carried out, in other words, the German occupational forces can arrest civilians who have had no part in any rebellion and have them executed as reprisals against those who have.

20 May 1941

German paratroops, including Max Schmeling, Germany’s famous boxing champion descend on Crete and are met with stiff resistance from British and colonial troops based on the island.

27 May 1941

The German battleship Bismarck is sunk by the Royal Navy in the Atlantic.

31 May 1941

In Holland, Jews are banned from using public baths and swimming pools.

May/June 1941

Himmler appoints Erich von dem Bach-Zelewski as Higher Police Leader for Central Russia.

June 1941

The Hungarian Pro-German government prepare the groundwork to seize and expel alien Jews to

the German occupied Ukraine. June 1941

Rudolf Hoess, Commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp meets with Heinrich Himmler to discuss the plans to build an industrial plant for IG Farben at Auschwitz.

06 June 1941

Hitler issues his ‘Commissar Order’ prior to his invasion of the Soviet Union.

14 June 1941

Hitler holds his last briefing conference with his Commanders-in-chief and Generals prior to the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Mid June 1941

In Holland, Jewish lawyers are banned from representing non Jewish clients.

22 June 1941

Operation Barbarossa begins at 0330 hours, with the onslaught against the Soviet Union. The German army groups, North, Centre and South smash into the Soviet defences which cause the Soviet troops to panic and flee. On hearing the news, Josef Stalin refuses to believe that Hitler has really attacked the Soviet Union.

22 June 1941

Himmler promotes Hans-Adolf Prutzmann to Higher SS and Police Leader for Northern Russia. and Friedrich Jeckeln as Higher SS and Police Leader for the Ukraine.

23 June 1941

Stalin sets up a new ‘High Command HQ’ – the Stavka Glavno Komandovaniya and becomes its chairman.

23 June 1941

In his special train Amerika, Hitler heads for his new headquarters known as the Wolfsschanze (Wolfs Lair) in East Prussia.

23 June 1941

German troops occupy Kaunas (Kovno). Members of the Einsatzgruppen (special groups or squads set up to liquidate political and racial enemies) also enter the city.

23 June 1941

The T-34 tank makes its first combat debut against the Germans. The anti-tank gunners of the German 197th Infantry Division discovers that their 37mm anti-tank guns cannot penetrate the T-34s armour, and after that the guns become known as the ‘door knockers’.

23-24 June 1941

Heinrich Muller, head of the Gestapo, issues directives to the Gestapo office in the City of Tilsit. The directive orders the setting up of a mobile killing unit (Einsatzkommando Tilsit) to remove all Jews within the Lithuanian border area.

26 June 1941

German panzers reach the river Dvina.

27 June 1941

A colonel within Army Group North, witnesses ‘the Death Dealer of Kovno’ at work. Surrounded by a crowd of men, women and children, most of them laughing and cheering as the young Lithuanian Death Dealer enthusiastically murders his Jewish victims. ‘On the concrete forecourt of the petrol station a blond man of medium height, aged about twentyfive, stood leaning on a wooden club, resting. The club was thick as his arm and came up to his chest. At his feet lay about twenty dead or dying people. Water continuously from a hose washed blood away into the drainage gully. Just a few steps behind this man some twenty men, guarded by armed civilians, stood waiting for their cruel execution in silent submission. In response to a cursory wave, the next man stepped forward silently and was beaten to death with the wooden club in the bestial manner, each low accompanied by enthusiastic shouts from the audience’.

27 June 1941

The German Order Police Battalion 309 forces some 700 Jews into the city of Bialystok’s main synagogue and then sets fire to the building killing all inside.

28 June 1941

Members of the pro-Nazi Romanian ‘Iron Guard’ murder 1,500 Jews in Lasi.

29 June 1941

Hitler publicly names Goring to be his successor to the offices of Fuhrer and Reich Chancellor in the event of his death.

29 June 1941

Stalin leaves Moscow for his dacha; it is believed that he has had a nervous breakdown.

30 June 1941

Himmler and Heydrich set out on an inspection tour of the newly conquered territories in the east.

30 June 1941

Einsatzgruppen 4a and local Ukrainians murder some 300 Jews in Lutsk.

30 June 1941

Germany occupies Lvov.

July 1941

Jewish newspapers in New York report that the Germans have murdered hundreds of Jews in Minsk, Lvov and Brest-Litovsk.

July 1941

Boris Shaposhnikov becomes the Soviet Unions Chief of the General Staff.

July 1941

Field-marshal Wilhelm von Leeb, commander of Army Group North reports that large numbers of Red Army troops , caught within the German advance, wearing peasant clothing are roaming local swamps and forests.

July 1941

The Spanish provide Hitler with enough volunteers to create a Division for the war against the Soviet Union. This division becomes the 250th Division (Azul –Blue)

July 1941

Paul Thummel, an Abwehr official, who has been secretly passing on secret information onto the Czech government-in-exile informs them that his government are murdering Jews in the Ukraine. This information is subsequently passed on to the British government.

July 1941

The Soviet navy loses two of their destroyers (Serdity and Smely) to enemy mines.

01 July 1941

The German army captures Riga in Latvia.

02 July 1941

Reinhardt Heydrich issues a directive instructing his Einsatzgruppens that all Communist politicians, political commissars, Jews, partisans and anyone suspected of working for the Communist Party and state be executed.

02 July 1941

Mass killings begin in Vilnus after the arrival of a German Einsatzkommando.

03 July 1941

In a radio speech to the Soviet people, the first since the German invasion, Stalin orders a scorched earth policy against the German invaders stating that Russia is fighting for her very existence and calls for guerrilla warfare to be carried to the Germans in all occupied areas , nothing he demands should fall into the enemies’ hands.

03 July 1941

In Germany, General Halder notes in his diary that he believes that operation Barbarossa has been won within a space of two weeks.

04 July 1941

The Nazis establish a Judenrat in Vilna.

05 July 1941

The German army reach the river Dnieper and arrive in Trembowla.

07 July 1941

The German Order Police Battalion 322 arrives at the former Soviet controlled city of Bialystok in Poland.

08 July 1941

The German Order Police Battalion 322 carries out a raid on the Jewish sector of the city of Bialystok in Poland and later in the afternoon Himmler and Bach-Zelewski inspect the booty that the Battalion had seized from their victims during the raid.

09 July 1941

The rivers Dvina and the Dnieper are crossed by the German troops and the Soviet city of Smolensk is threatened.

11 July 1941

In Central Russia, Max Montua, Police Lieutenant-Colonel passes on an order to his men from Higher SS and Police Leader Bach-Zelewski stating that all male Jews from the ages from 17 to 45 years old, who have been accused of looting are to be immediately executed and their corpses buried in an unmarked grave.

11 July 1941

In the town of Tarnopol, Einsatzkommando 4B reports that it has carried out 127 executions and a further 600 have been killed in pogroms.

12 July 1941

The Luftwaffe bomb Moscow for the first time.

14 July 1941

The Soviet secret police (NKVD) arrest some 35,000 Lithuanian citizens and deport them to their gulags (Soviet style concentration camps).

14 July 1941

The German army reach the river Luga.

15 July 1941

Believing that the war against the Soviet Union will soon be over Hitler orders arms manufacturing priority be switched from the army to the navy and air force in preparation for the final showdown with Britain.

17 July 1941

Alfred Rosenberg is formally appointed Minister of the Occupied Eastern Territories by Hitler.

20 July 1941

The Nazis set up a Jewish Ghetto in Minsk.

21 July 1941

Losovsk, Stalin’s head of the Soviet propaganda machine announces that hundreds of partisans are constantly attacking German lines of communications.

23 July 1941

The 1st SS Infantry Brigade enters the Ukraine in order to support the Einsatzgruppen in the murder of Jewish men, women and children.

24 July 1941

In Kishinev, the Nazis set up a Jewish ghetto.

25 July 1941

Himmler authorises the creation of an auxiliary police force within the Soviet Union.

25 July1941

The first report on Soviet guerrilla activity is issued from the German High Command stating that their supply lines are in danger.

26 July 1941

The Germans reach Smolensk.

28 July 1941

At a roll call in the concentration camp of Auschwitz, the SS inform the inmates that all the sick

will be transported out of the camp to a place where their illnesses can be treated properly. Some 500 sick inmates leave the camp by train to the mental hospital at Sonnenstein near Danzig, where they are put into specially constructed gas chambers and gassed. These are the first inmates of Auschwitz to be gassed. 31 July 1941

The German Army Group North reaches Lake Llmen.

Late July 1941

A report from the 256 Infantry Division operating in Belorussia indicates that partisans have established themselves in the area and that sniping and assassination are becoming more frequent.

August 1941

Two companies of Police Battalion 322 arrest some 322 Jews in the Minsk ghetto and place them into one of their local prisons prior to their execution.

August 1941

Hitler visits Army Group Centre, and South’s Headquarters in the East.

01 August 1941

The Red Army launches a counter-attack from the Pripet Marshes.

01 August 1941

In Holland, Jewish estate agents are banned from working with non-Jews.

03 August 1941

The Bishop of Munster in Westphalia denounces Hitler’s euthanasia policy (T4) by claiming that the recent spats of RAF bombing on their cities was a sign that God was punishing them for breaking the sixth commandment.

04 August 1941

The Jewish ghetto in Kovno is sealed by the Nazis.

04 August 1941

Several thousand Jews are murdered by elements of the 1st SS Infantry Brigade in the Western Ukraine. They are first taken to the town of Ostrog and then to a pre-arranged killing area where they are forced to strip before being shot.

05-08 August 1941

The Nazis murder some 10,000 Jews in and around Pinsk.

7-8 August 1941

The Soviet air force manages their first air raid on Berlin.

08 August 941

Stalin announces that he is making himself the Supreme Commander of the Soviet armed forces.

08 August 1941

The Soviet destroyer, the Karl Marx is destroyed by German air attack.

11 August 1941

General Franz Halder admits in his diary that he and Hitler had seriously underestimated the size

and ability of the Soviet armed forces. He goes on to state that he believed that they could only field some 200 divisions and already they have encountered 360. 15 August 1941

Ambassador Count Werner von der Schulenburg is told by Hitler that the war with the Soviet Union will be over by 1st October.

15 August 1941

Leopold Gutterer, Goebbels’s State Secretary, pushes for the Jews in Berlin to be deported.

15 August 1941

Reinhard Heydrich sends a coded message to his Einsatzgruppen leaders, telling them to make that no unauthorised persons gain access to their orders and instructions.

18 August 1941

Joseph Goebbels pays his first visit to Hitler’s Wolf Lair. Here he discusses with the Fuhrer the need to mend bridges with the churches, at least until the war was over.

19 August 1941

Goebbels urges Hitler to deport Berlins Jews but Hitler promises him that all Jews within the German Reich will one day be deported eastwards, but at the moment he is more concerned with winning the war than solving the Jewish Question.

Mid August

Himmler’s Order Police in occupied Soviet territory start killing Jewish children for the first time.

Mid August 1941

Bach-Zelewski informs Himmler of the psychological problems his men are suffering because of the of the executions they are involved in, Himmler promises that he will do what he can.

19-22 August 1941

The German Police Battalion 45, part of police regiment South murder 1,059 Jews in or near the area of Slavuta in the east.

23 August 1941

In Poland the German Police Battalion 314, part of Police regiment south liquidate 367 Jews in the area in and around Kowel.

24 August 1941

Hitler officially cancel’s the T4 programme though, secretly the killings continued.

24 August 1941

The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill broadcasts a speech to the nation about German aggression in the Soviet Union. In the speech he states: ‘The aggressor is surprised, startled, staggered, for the first time in his experience mass murder has become unprofitable. He retaliates by the most frightful cruelties. As his armies advance, whole districts are being exterminated. Scores of thousands-literally scores of thousands- of executions in cold blood are being perpetrated by the German police troops upon the Russian patriots who defend their native soil. Since the Mongol invasions of Europe in the sixteenth century, there has never been methodical, merciless butchery on a scale or approaching such a scale. And this is but the beginning, famine

and pestilence have yet to follow in the bloody ruts of Hitler’s tanks…We are in the presence of a crime without a name.’ 28 August 1941

The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill learns that the German Police Battalion314 murder 367 Jews in the east.

29 August 1941

Germany’s ally Finland captures Viipuri.

30 August 1941

Reinhard Heydrich instructs his Einsatzgruppen leaders to prevent civilian and military spectators from entering mass execution sites.

31 August 1941

The British Prime Minister Winston Churchill reads decoded German messages which indicate that their Police Battalions 45 and 314 have murdered 355 Jews in the east.

September 1941

The decision is made to expand Auschwitz concentration camp by building another camp close by as a POW camp. The camp is to be located at what the Poles called Brzezinka, which the Germans called Birkenau. The camp is approximately 2 miles from Auschwitz 1. The task of building the new camp fell to SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer Karl Bischoff, newly appointed chief of the Auschwitz Construction Office and the architect SS-Rottenfuhrer (corporal) Fritz Ertl. Some 10,000 Soviet POWs where sent to Auschwitz to be used as slave labour to build the camp. These prisoners were the first prisoners to have their numbers tattooed onto their bodies.

01 September 1941

Members of the German Order Police execute some 290 Jewish men and 40 Jewess’s in Minsk.

01 September 1941

In Holland, Jewish children are forced to attend separate schools.

03 September 1941

The Nazis carry out their first gas experiments in Auschwitz.

05 September 1941

In Vilna, the Nazis establish two Jewish ghettos and have them sealed off.

12 September 1941

The Germans manage to trap a large amount of Soviet troops in a pocket at Kiev.

13 September 1941

Kurt Daluege informs his Higher SS and Police leaders that messages deemed top secret , ie; execution statistics are to be sent by courier, all other messages could be sent by field radio.

15 September 1941

The Germans manage to cut off Leningrad from the rest of the Soviet Union.

15 September 1941

The Gauleiter of Hamburg, Karl Kaufmann sends a letter to Hitler requesting his permission to deport the city’s Jewish population so that he can allocate their homes to non-Jews whom had

recently lost their homes in a British air raid. Hitler decides that the time has come to start deporting Germany’s Jews eastwards, and authorises the removal of Reich Jews from German soil. 18 September 1941

The Soviet City of Kiev is captured by the Germans.

18 September 1941

Himmler instructs Arthur Greiser, Gauleiter of the Warthegau in Poland to prepare the Lodz ghetto for the arrival of some 60,000 Jews from the Old Reich.

19 September 1941

In Germany, Jews are ordered to wear the ‘Star of David’.

19 September 1941

The Nazis liquidate the ghetto of Zhitomir killing some 10,000 Jews in the process.

19 September 1941

Kiev falls to the Germans.

22 September 1941

In Holland, All Jews are banned from all non-economic organisations and associations.

23 September 1941

Joseph Goebbels visits the Wolf’s Lair for the second time. This time he asks the Fuhrer to return to Berlin and made a speech to the German nation in an attempt to lift their spirits. Hitler promises Goebbels that he will make a speech in the Berlin Sportpalast on 3rd October.

25 September 1941

The Germans lay siege to Sevastopol.

26 September 1941

The Germans finally manage to eliminate all resistance with the Kiev pocket.

29 September 1941

Massacre at Babi Yar. With the German army in control of the Ukrainian capital of Kiev. The Nazi murder machine rolls up its sleeve to carry out yet another Aktion. They start by posting decrees all over Kiev demanding that all Jews, regardless of age or sex, report for resettlement. Some 33,871 turn up as ordered, believing that they would be resettled. Personnel from Order Police Battalion 45 cordons off the area whilst the other members of the killing squads escorts the victims to a ravine known as Babi Yar just a few kilometres outside Kiev. Here the Jews are ordered to hand over all their valuables and undress. In groups, men, women and children are herded into the ravine, where special death squads (Einsatzkommados) await them. There the 33,871 Jews are systematically murdered within a space of a couple of days.

Late September 1941

Heydrich is promoted to Reich Protector of Bohemia and Moravia, answerable only to Hitler in this capacity.

October 1941

The Soviet General Georgi Konstantinovich Zhukov reorganises the city of Leningrad’s defence

October 1941

The first transport of Jews to the newly established death camp at Majdanek takes place.

02 October 1941

Operation Taifun (Typhoon), the German drive towards Moscow begins.

02 October 1939

The Ninth Company with staff from Higher SS and Police leader Bach-Zelewski, plus some 23 Ukrainian policemen seize 2,208 Jews from the Mogilev ghetto and executed the following day.

03 October 1941

Hitler addresses the German in the Sportpalast in Berlin. He lays the blame for the war on Britain and international Jewry.

04 October 1941

Hitler leaves Berlin to return to his Wolf’s Lair in the east.

06 October 1941

Von Kleist’s German force reaches the Sea of Azov.

08 October 1941

The Vitebsk ghetto is liquidated by the Nazis, some 16,000 Jews are murdered in the process.

14 October 1941

German troops reach Kalinin.

14 October 1941

Kurt Daluege, Chief of the Order Police and a close friend of Joseph Goebbels, signs a directive ordering the first deportation of Berlin’s Jewish community to the east.

15 October 1941

Himmler returns to his East Prussian HQ from Mogilev and meets with Odilo Globocnik, SS and Police leader in Lublin. Globocnik informs Himmler about the difficulties he is having with the Governor of occupied Poland (General Government), Hans Frank.

16 October 1941

German advance units are now only some sixty miles from the gates of Moscow.

16 October 1941

The Germans occupy Odessa and the Odessa Jews are murdered in the process.

16 October 1941

Himmler has 20,000 German, Austrian and some Luxembourgian Jews, along with 5,000 Gypsies sent from the Reich to the Lodz ghetto.

16 October 1941

The NKVD murders more than 200 prisoners in Moscow detention centres so as they could not fall into German hands if Moscow was taken.

19 October 1941

German Order Police murder 3,726 Jews from the Mogilev ghetto.

20 October 1941

Stalin declares a state-of-emergency in Moscow and informs the Soviet people of his intention

to remain in the Soviet capital. Mid October 1941

Himmler orders Friedrich Jeckeln, Higher SS and Police leader switch places with his counterpart Prutzmann in the Ukraine.

Mid October 1941

The Polish government-in-exile in London receives a report from one of their agents in Poland about the murder of some 6,000 Jews at Czyzew near Lomza.

21 October 1941

Around 1500 Jews are massacred in the White Russian town of Koidanov by Einsatzkommados from the Lithuanian Brigade

23 October 1941

Himmler visits the operational headquarters of Bach-Zelewski in Mogilev, and visits the newly established forced labour camp in the area.

25 October 1941

Hitler’s commander-in-chief of the army, field-marshal Walther von Brauchitsch, issues the first directive detailing how partisan activity should be combated.

25 October 1941

President Roosevelt denounces the executions of French hostages at the hands of the German authorities in occupied France.

26 October 1941

Friedrich Jeckeln, Higher SS and Police leader arrives in Riga to carry out his new duties.

26 October 1941

The New York Times reports the massacre of least 15,000 Jews in Galicia by Germans and Ukrainians.

28 October 1941

The Nazis murder thousands of Jews at ‘Ninth Fort’

30 October 1941

Bratislava Jews are expelled to rural Slovakia.

Late October 1941

Due to the horrendous wet and muddy conditions the German assault towards Moscow comes to a virtual standstill. But when the frost arrives in November the German juggernaut continues to roll forward again.

Late Oct –early Nov 1941

The Jewish Chronicle in London reports that thousands of Jews in the Ukraine have been murdered during pogroms.

November 1941

Alfred Rosenberg, Hitler’s Reich minister for the occupied territories notes: ‘Soviet rule has been eradicated in the occupied territories; the building of a new empire has begun’.

November 1941

The Nazi authorities establish their first death camp at Chelmno (Kulmhof to the Germans). The camp was situated 60 km northwest of Lodz in Poland. The camps first commandant was SS-Hauptsturmfuhrer (captain) Herbert Lange. Lange had gained valuable experience in the murder of mentally disabled people in Poland prior to his taking of command of the death camp. He had learnt to utilise the Nazis new invention, gas vans, where people were locked inside and exhaust fumes from the vehicle was piped into the back (carbon Monoxide). However this killing process had its faults as at times the SS found people still breathing after the gassing had taken place, but for the moment it would have to do. The bodies would be disposed of in the crematoria in the Rzuchowski Forest which was located about 4 km away from the camp.

01 November 1941

The Nazis begin the construction of the death camp at Belzec, near the Polish village of Belzec on the south-eastern border of Lublin district. The camp is 265 m long and 275 m wide and consisted of three areas: administrative area, reception zone, and extermination zone. Police Captain Christian Wirth, who had already gained particle experience with the "T 4"(forced Euthanasia) programme, became the first commander of the death camp.

03 November 1941

In Amsterdam, Jewish markets are established.

07 November 1941

In Holland, Jews are banned from travelling or moving house without first gaining official permission.

09 November 1941

The Germans capture Yalta.

14 November 1941

Generaloberst Erich von Manstein, commander of the 11th army operating in the Crimea is informed by his counter-intelligence that there is a well organised, centrally-controlled partisan unit operating in the southern part of the region, as a result he forms anti-partisan units to deal with the threat.

17 November 1941

Ernst Udet, one of Hermann Goering’s top Luftwaffe officials, commits suicide.

17 November 1941

Some 944 Jews are deported from Berlin on transport train DO26 to the ghetto in Kovno (Kaunas).

18 November 1941

In Bremen, the German authorities deport some 971 Jews to Minsk on transport train DO56.

Mid November 1941

The New York Journal American reports of the murder of some 25,000 Jews (the figure was actually higher) by Germany’s allies, the Romanians in and around Odessa in the Soviet Union.

21 November 1941

Rostov falls to the Germans.

23 November 1941

Klin falls to the Germans.

24 November 1941

The Germans evacuate Rostov in the face of a Soviet counter-attack.

24 November 1941

The Nazis establish the ‘model’ concentration camp at Theresienstadt.

29 November 1941

The Germans cross the Moska-Volga canal.

29 November 1941

Reinhard Heydrich invites certain state secretaries to a top secret conference at a Villa at Wannsee, just a few hundred yards from Joseph Goebbels house outside Berlin. The purpose of the meeting is to co-ordinate the Final Solution to the Jewish Question. The conference date was set for the 9th December 1941 but because of the Japanese attack on the American fleet at Pearl Harbour it was put back until the 2 nd January, but again the meeting had to be rescheduled until the 20th January 1942.

30 November 1941

The Nazis murder some 30,000 Jews at Rumbuli

05 December 1941

Due to worsening weather conditions and determined defenders Hitler halts the drive on Moscow.

05 December 1941

In Holland, All non-Dutch Jews are ordered to register for voluntary emigration.

06 December 1941

The Commander-in-Chief of the Soviet front, Georgi Zhukov launches a counter-attack on the German forces that are west of Moscow.

07 December 1941

Japan attacks the US base at Pearl harbour.

08 December 1941

Gas vans are introduced at the Chelmno death camp.

09 December 1941

Heydrich postpones a meeting concerning the final solution to the Jewish question after learning about the Japanese attack on the US base on Pearl Harbour.

11 December 1941

The German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop summons the American Charge d’ Affaires, Leland Morris and reads to him Germany’s declaration of War on the United States of America.

11 December 1941

Italy declares war on the United States of America.

15 December 1941

Klin and Kalinin are recaptured by the Red Army.

17 December 1941

German assault on Sevastopol begins.

18 December 1941

Himmler notes in his diary after a meeting with Hitler that the Jews are to be exterminated as partisans.

19 December 1941

Hitler takes over as Commander-in-Chief of the Army.

21 December 1941

Some 40,000 Jews are murdered by the Nazis at Bogdanovka.

22 December 1941

Arcadia – Code name for the Washington conference which will last until 14th January 1942 begins. Here Winston Churchill and Roosevelt, along with their military advisors plan out future strategies so as to co-ordinate their war efforts.

26 December 1941

The Red Army launches a counter-attack against the German forces in the Crimea.

30 December 1941

Soviet troops recapture Tula from the Germans.

1942 January-May 1942

Some 55,000 Jews are deported from the Lodz Ghetto to the death camp of Chelmno.

January 1942

Nine governments-in-exile meet at St James’s Palace in London to discuss and sign a resolution condemning Germany’s naked aggression. They also call for a war-crimes trial to be set up after the war to try all Germans involved in atrocities during the conflict.

01 January 1942

In Holland, Jews are no longer allowed to employ non-Jewish domestic servants.

02 January 1942

The German 9th Army which has just retreated from Kalinin is ordered by Hitler to make no further withdrawals.

05 January 1942

Some 900 soviet partisans, including Red Army soldiers launch a large scale offensive against the German 11th Army on the shore of the Black Sea.

05 January 1942

In Holland, the Dutch council of Churches protest against German oppression against Jews.

07 January 1942

In Yugoslavia, Tito’s partisan forces are driven from Olovo by the Germans anti-partisan offensive.

07 January 1942

The Red Army launches a counter-offensive north of Novgorod. Many of the German defenders are unable to fight because of frostbite.

07-08 January 1942

The Red Army launches a new offensive on their Northern sector.

09 January 1942

In Holland, Jews are banned from all public education facilities.

10 January 1942

In Amsterdam, the first transport of Jews are sent to work camps.

12 January 1942

In Kiev, according to the Operational Situation Report USSR No. 173, the Germans execute 104 political prisoners, 75 saboteurs and looters, and about 8,000 Jews. The killings last 12 days.

12 January 1942

In Kovno, 5,000 Jews, who had been brought by train to the former Lithuanian capital from Germany and Austria are taken to the Ninth Fort and shot.

12 January 1942

The Germans deport some 19,582 Jews from Odessa to concentration camps near Balta.

12 January 1942

The British Merchant ship Cyclops is sunk off the eastern seaboard of the United States of America.

13 January 1942

In London, representatives of nine occupied countries meet to sign a declaration stating that people who commit war crimes will be brought to justice after the war. Among these nine was General de Gaulle of France and General Sikorski for Poland.

14 January 1942

In the White Russian village of Ushachi, the German killing squads murder some 807 Jews by driving them to an edge of a pit and shooting them. Local peasants who had witnessed the executions jumped into the pit to search the dead and dying for gold teeth to extract.

14 January 1942

The Germans near the village of Kublichi, in Russia murder some 925 Jews. Like the peasants from Ushachi, the local peasants also search the dead and dying for their valuables.

14 January 1942

The concentration and deportation begins of all Jews in occupied Holland begins.

16 January 1942

The Nazis deport more than 10,000 Jews from the ghetto of Lodz to the death camp at Chelmno.

17 January 1942

The British destroyer Matabele, whilst on escort duty with the Murmansk convoy, is torpedoed and sunk with the loss of 247 men.

18 January 1942

The Red Army parachute 1,643 soldiers behind German lines south-east and south-west of Vyazma, were they link up with partisan units. Their aim is to disrupt enemy communications and supply lines.

20 January 1942

The Red Army recaptures the German positions at Mozhaisk, thus acting as a shield against any German drive against Moscow.

20 January 1942

Jakub Grojanowski, a young Jew, having escaped from a work detail at the death camp at Chelmno, which was being forced to bury the bodies of Jews whom had just been gassed to death within sealed vans, reached the nearby village of Grabow. Seeking out the local rabbi, Grojanowski told him what he had seen and what he had been forced to do, which also included the burial of his own family.

20 January 1942

The Wannsee Conference takes place in Berlin. The purpose of the conference was to discuss and implement the co-ordination of ‘the final solution to the Jewish question’. The meeting was chaired by SS-Obergruppenfuehrer (General) Heydrich with Adolf Eichmann keeping the minutes. Heydrich spells out to all present exactly what would be expected of them as state secretaries. Their departments are to assist in everyway they can in the implementation of the destruction of the entire Jewish community in Europe.

No one at the meeting is left with any doubts about

the true nature of Nazi policy towards Judaism. 23 January 1942

Hungarian soldiers at Novi Sad on the Danube, force 550 Jews and 292 Serbs onto the frozen part of the river. Then they shelled them until the ice broke from under their feet and all drowned in the ice cold water.

23 January 1942

A group of young Jews in Vilna meet to set up a resistance group. They intend to target German military installations within the area.

23 January 1942

In Holland, Jews are banned from using motor vehicles and they are ordered to carry identification cards with the letter ‘J’ imprinted on it.

23 January 1942

The Red Army recapture Kholm and virtually encircle the German controlled Rzhev.

24 January 1942

The Red Army re-crosses the river Donets.

24 January 1942

The Nazis deport a further 30,000 Jews from the ghetto of Lodz to the death camp at Chelmno.

26 January 1942

The Irish Prime Minister protests at the arrival of American troops that are to be stationed in Northern Ireland.

26 January 1942

In Yugoslavia, the Germans force several hundred Jewish men, women and children on a forced march through blistering winter weather from Ruma to a concentration camp at Sajmiste. Mothers try to keep their children warm by their embrace. The children whom freeze to death are quickly buried in the snow, their mothers hoping that come spring, and other people will give their children a decent burial.

27 February 1942

Rudolf Hoess, with his architect Karl Bischoff and Hans Kammler, head of the SS Central Building Office decides to move the location of the crematorium, which had been planned for Auschwitz 1 to the new camp at Birkenau (Auschwitz 2)

29 January 1942

In North Africa, Germanys Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps occupies Benghazi.

31 January 1942

An Operational Situation Report USSR No. 170 is sent from Berlin to more than 60 recipients. The reports states that within the last six days, in the Crimea, 3,601 people were shot; 3,286 of these were Jews, 152 Communists and NKVD (secret police) agents, 84 partisans and 79 looters, saboteurs, and asocial elements. In all, to date 85,201’.

31 January 1942

Since the siege of Leningrad began, it is estimated that some 200, 00 civilians have either froze or starved to death.

01 February 1942

In Loknya, Russia, the Germans murder the last remaining 38 Jews and Gypsies of that area.

01 February 1942

British intelligence suffers from its worse setback of the war when the German Submarine Command, as part of its internal security drive, changed its Enigma settings in such a way that made it impossible for the British to read their secret messages for the rest of the year.

08 February 1942

Fritz Todt, the German Minister for Armaments and War Production, leaves Rastenburg to fly back to Berlin, however his plane crashes on take-off and he is killed.

09 February 1942

The German anthropologist and surgeon, Auguste Hirte, head of the Anatomy Institute, which had just been set up at the University of Strasbourg, writes to Heinrich Himmler. In the letter he states, ‘By procuring the skulls of the Jewish-Bolshevik commissars, who represent the prototype of the repulsive but characteristic subhuman, one has the chance to obtain palpable scientific data. The best practical method is to turn over alive all such individuals. Followed induced death of the

Jew, the head, which should not be damaged, should be separated from the body and sent in a hermetically sealed tin can filled with preservative fluid’. Himmler gave Hirte the authority he needed. Hirte used the skulls of more than a hundred murdered Jews to pursue his medicalscientific work. 16 February 1942

Five of Germany’s largest submarines are sent across the Atlantic to attack Allied shipping off the coast of America, from Trinidad to New York.

17 February 1942

The Red Army launches a new offensive against the Germans near Rzhev.

19 February 1942

The British government receives a report from Sweden, which had been sent by a leading Swedish expert on euthanasia, who had just returned from a visit to Germany. He writes about one asylum where the Nazis have murdered 1,200 people by poison.

20 February 1942

In the east, the Soviet offensive against the German lines runs out of steam and comes to a halt.

23 February 1942

A British submarine the ‘Trident’ torpedoes the German heavy cruiser Prinz Eugen. Though the Eugen is not sunk, she losses 50 men from the attack.

24 February 1942

Russian forces surround a German Army Corps South-east of Staraya.

March 1942

In Russia, the Nazis launch Operation Marsh Fever, an anti-partisan sweep. Its commander, General Jaeckeln, is able to report to Berlin at the successful conclusion of the operation. Some 389 partisans killed, 1,274 persons shot on suspicion, 8,350 Jews liquidated.

March 1942

The German doctor, Rascher, conducts a medical experiment on a 37 year old Jew, who was deemed to be in good condition. Dr Rascher placed the man alive in a specially built chamber in which the doctor simulated altitude gradually reaching 12 kilometres. The suffering and death of the Jew was meticulously recorded. He notes indicated that the Jew perspired, then he developed cramp, after which he became breathless before becoming unconscious and in turn died.

Dr Rascher informs Himmler that this experiment was the first observed experiment

on a live human being. The above-described actions, Rascher went on to explain, will merit particular scientific interest because they were recorded until the very last moment by an electrocardiogram.

Dr Rascher conducted 200 such experiments and it is believed that at least 80

victims died. In his 24 page report to Himmler, he sets out his conclusions. He stated with assurance that flying without pressure suits and oxygen was impossible above 12 kilometres. March-April 1942

The Germans establish the Sobibor death camp in the Lublin area of Poland. The camps function is to liquidate the local Jewish population primarily by gassing within specially built chambers.

The carbon monoxide which was generated by diesel engines placed outside the gas chambers was piped into the rooms. The camp had at its peak 6 gas chambers, each being able to hold at least 180 men, women and children. The camp first commandant Franz Stangl had been involved in Hitler’s euthanasia programme (T4). Stangl commanded at least 30 SS men and some 200 to 300 Ukrainian guards. March 1942

The first transport of Jews from Slovakia arrive in Auschwitz. Everyone from this transport was admitted straight into the camp and not sent to the gas chambers.

01 March 1942

The Soviets launch a new offensive in the Crimea against the Germans still holding out.

01 March 1942

Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, the recently appointed commander of Army Group South, informs Hitler that despite their huge losses in battle, the Russians might still be able, not only to draw on enough reserve troops to counter the German spring offensive, but also to create new armies east of Moscow. General Halder disagrees with Bock’s appraisal. General Halder gives Hitler an estimated account of German casualties thus far on the eastern front. In the eight months since June 1941, 202,257 German soldiers have been killed, 725,642 wounded and 112,617 incapacitated by frostbite. A further 400,000 have been taken prisoners by the Soviets.

02 March 1942

At least 5,000 Jews are taken from the Minsk ghetto by the Nazis and murdered.

03 March 1942

The RAF attacks the German controlled Renault factory at Billan Court, just outside Paris. Some 623 people lay dead with a further 1,500 injured.

04 March 1942

In White Russia, 3,000 Jews are taken from the ghetto at Baranowicze by the Nazis and murdered. Within the last 48 hours, the Nazis have murdered some 12,000 people.

05 March 1942

In the Crimean town of Feodosiya, the Germans launch three anti-partisan sweeps, and according to the Operation Situation Report No 184, ‘678 were Jews, 359 Communist officials, 153 partisans and 810 asocial elements, i.e., Gypsies, mentally ill and saboteurs.

06 March 1942

At Klinstsy, 30 Gypsies and 270 Jews are brought by truck to a ditch outside the town, ordered to undress and shot.

07 March 1942

In Zagreb, Archbishop Stepinac, writes to the Croatian Minister of the Interior about rumours of a Nazi round up of Jews in the area. Stepinac pleads with the Minister to try to stop the round up, if true, stating that these citizens are not guilty of any crime. His appeal is in vain.

08 March 1942

The RAF, using 211 bombers carries out a raid on Essen in Germany.

17 March 1942

The Nazi death camp known as Belzec is completed and opened.

19 March 1942

Hitler summons Goebbels to the Wolfs Lair to discuss food rationing.

19 March 1942

The Germans launch Operation Munich, an assault on partisan bases throughout the YelnyaDorogobuzh area of Russia.

20 March 1942

In the Polish town of Zgierz, one hundred Poles are seized and taken to a nearby labour camp to be shot. All 6,000 inhabitants of Zgierz are marched to the market place and forced to watch the execution.

20 March 1942

In Holland, Jews are no longer allowed to dispose of furniture or other household goods.

21 March 1942

Hitler authorises Fritz Sauckel, his plenipotentiary General for Labour Mobilization, to obtain by whatever methods might be needed, the labour force required to push the German war

economy into its highest capacity. Labourers could now be brought from all occupied lands. 25 March 1942

The Luftwaffe carries out its first test flight of their Me-262 twinjet fighter.

25 March 1942

In Holland, The German administration bans marriage between Jews and non-Jews.

26-27 March 1942

Some 1,112 Jews are deported from France to Auschwitz. This is the first transports to the death camp in Poland from occupied France.

26 March 1942

Nine hundred and ninety-nine Slovak women are sent to the gas chambers at Auschwitz

27 March 1942

In Holland, the Nazi Nuremberg Laws become effective.

28 March 1942

British naval and commando forces carry out Operation Chariot, an attack on the German drydock at St Nazaire.

28 March 1942

In an attempt to tie down as many Russian troops as possible, Joachim von Ribbentrop presses the Japanese Ambassador in Berlin, Count Oshima, to secure a Japanese attack on Russia. The Japanese ignore Ribbentrop’s request.

28 March 1942

The RAF launches 234 bombers against the German Baltic Port of Lubeck.

29 March 1942

Four Allied ships, scattered from their destroyer escort by a ferocious storm, are attacked and sunk by the Germans.

April 1942

Auguste Spitz, Marianne Grunfeld and Therese Steiner; Three Jews living on occupied Guernsey are deported to Nazi controlled Eastern Europe. British government and police officials on the island co-operate fully with the Nazi persecution and deportation of the islands Jews.

01 April 1942

In Amsterdam, Jews are no longer allowed to use the town hall to get married in.

08 April 1942

According to a German Einsatzgruppen report, there is no more Jews left in the Crimea.

24 April 1942

In Holland, The Nazis close down most Jewish butchers.

26 April 1942

Hitler reconvenes the Reichstag in Berlin with the sole purpose of attaining the legal right to dismiss from office anyone he wished, especially judges. In doing so, Hitler has now become the law of the land.

30 April 1942

The Nazis establish a Jewish ghetto in Pinsk.

Early May 1942

The Nazis carry out their first mass killing of Jews at the Sobibor death camp.

03 May 1942

In Holland, The Nazis introduce the forcible wearing of the yellow star for the Jewish population.

12 May 1942

In Holland, Jews are banned from holding any post office accounts.

18 May 1942

The New York Times publishes an article claiming that the Germans have murdered some 200,000 Jews.

21 May 1941

In Holland, Jews are ordered to hand in all assets and possessions valued at fl.250 and above by 30 June 1942. They are also banned from holding safety deposit boxes.

27 May 1942

Just outside Prague, Reinhard Heydrich, Protector of Bohemia and Moravia is ambushed by Czech agents as he was being driven to his office in Hradschin Castle. The first agent tried to fire his sten gun at Heydrich but the weapon jammed. Heydrich’s driver in a panic hit the breaks of the vehicle which in turn allowed the other Czech agent to throw a grenade towards Heydrich who at this stage had leaped out of the vehicle and firing his personal weapon. Heydrich collapsed after

`

being hit by fragments of metal and was quickly rushed to the nearest hospital.

29 May 1942

In Holland, Jews are banned from fishing.

31 May 1942

An angry Hitler telephones Goering demanding to know how the RAF could launch a massive bombing raid on Cologne. Goering dismisses the amount of planes that were used claiming that no more than 70 planes had taken part in the bombing even though Goebbels had put the figure to about 250-300 and with Churchill stating that at least 1,000 planes at taken part in the raid.

02 June 1942

The Germans launch a fresh assault on the Soviet controlled city of Sevastopol.

02 June 1942

The BBC claims that some 700,000 Jews have been massacred by the Nazis in Poland.

02 June 1942

The Nazis start to deport German Jews to Theresienstadt.

04 July 1942

Systematic selections begin at the rail ramps at Auschwitz after the arrival of transports. Those deemed unfit, too young or too old are sent to their deaths. The others are used as slave labourers.

06 July 1942

In Holland, Jews are no longer allowed to use telephones or visit non-Jews.

15 July 1942

In Holland, the first deportation of Jews from Westerbork to Auschwitz begins

17 July 1942

In Holland, the Nazis impose new restrictions on the Jews. They may only shop between the hours 3pm and 5pm and from certain streets within The Hague and Scheveningen.

12 June 1942

In Holland, Jews are banned from purchasing fruit and vegetables’ from non-Jewish shops. The are also ordered to hand in all bicycles and any forms of transport they may have. On top of this They are forbidden to take part in any sports.

25 July 1942

In a radio broadcast from London, the Dutch Prime Minister urges his countrymen to help the Jews as much as they can.

16 June 1942

New transports of Jews are shipped off from Slovakia to Auschwitz in Poland. The first transports are mainly carrying able-bodied men whom the Nazis have decided to use as slave labour, the rest are mostly earmarked for the death.

04 June 1942

Reinhard Heydrich dies from his wounds that he received during the attempt on the life by Czech agents on the 27th of May.

11 June 1942

A meeting in Berlin, which is chaired by Adolf Eichmann; spells out that some 10,000 Belgian Jews, 15,000 Dutch Jews and 100,000 French Jews are to transported to the death Auschwitz.

20 June 1942

Kazimierz (Kazik) Piechowski, a polish political prisoner; Eugeniusz (Genek) Bendera, a Ukrainian who worked in the SS garage, Josef Lempart, a Priest and Stanislaw Jaster, a youth from Warsaw, manage to acquire SS uniforms and a vehicle and successfully drive out of Auschwitz to freedom. The only person to be punished for the escape of these four prisoners was their block Kapo, who was sent to Block 11 to be starved to death.

22 June 1942

The Nazis carry out their first transport of Jews from Drancy concentration camp to Auschwitz death camp.

26 June 1942

The Nazis inform the Dutch Jewish Council of the first planned deportation of Jews from Holland.

28 June 1942

Hitler’s launches Operation Blue, the codename for the second summer offensive in the Soviet Union. The operations plan is to drive south towards Stalingrad and into the Caucasus. If successful, Stalin would be deprived of his much needed oil supplies that came from the Caucus region thus delivering a devastating economic blow against the Soviet Union’s ability to wage war against Hitler’s attacking armies.

30 June 1942

In Holland, an 8pm curfew on Jews is imposed and they are also banned from using public transport.

02 July 1942

At a meeting between the Vichy police chief, Rene Bousquet and Nazi officials, Bousquet notifies his guests that only foreign Jews in France could be deported and that the Germans would have to deport them without the assistance of the French police. The Germans protest strongly and use threats to persuade the French to change their minds. The Police chief buckles under the pressure from the Nazi officials and the Vichy French agree to help the Germans deport all their foreign Jews.

03 July 1942

The German army finally captures Sevastopol from the Soviets.

06 July 1940

The first recorded escape takes place at Auschwitz.

09 July 1942

The Germans capture Veronezh.

16 July 1942

Hitler moves his headquarters from the Wolfs Lair to a secret location at Vinnitsa, in the Ukraine which was known by its codename ‘Werwolf’

16 July 1942

The Germans and the French police in Paris begin the round up of Jews within the city.

17/18 July 1942

Heinrich Himmler visits Auschwitz-Birkenau to inspect the way in which his lieutenants-of-death are carrying out his murderous instructions. He witnesses the selection of newly arrived prisoners and their death in a gas chamber and authorises a flogging of one of the women in the camp. In is so impressed that he promotes the camp commandant Rudolf Hoess to Obersturmbannführer (LtColonel).

19 July 1942

Himmler instructs his Hoherer SS-und Polizeifuhrer (HSSPF) Wilhelm Kruger who was based in Cracow, to resettle the entire Jewish population of the General-Government (occupied Poland) by 31 December 1942. What the instructions meant to the Jewish population was death within one of the Nazi’s six death camps.

21 July 1942

In America there is a mass rally against German brutality within the occupied countries.

22 July 1942

In Poland, the Nazis finish building the death camp at Treblinka. And the mass deportations from the Warsaw ghetto to Treblinka takes place.

23 July 1942

The Warsaw Judenrat Chairman, Adam Czerniakow, commits suicide because of the deportations.

28 July 1942

The Jewish Fighting Organisation (ZOB) is formed in Warsaw to combat against

the

deportations. 30 July 1942

The German industrial Eduard Schulte, from Breslau meets with a Swiss business acquaintance in Zurich where the German informs the Swiss about the Nazi policy of concentrating all of Europe’s Jews in the east so that they could kill them in specially built gas chambers and dispose their bodies in crematoriums’ specially built for the purpose. He estimated that between 3.5 million and 4 million Jews are to be murdered by the Nazis. He urges the Swiss man to get this information to the British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill and to the American President as soon as possible.

Aug-September 1942

The killing process at the Sobibor death camp is stopped whilst the main rail line undergoes repairs.

August 1942

The three crematorium ovens that had been earmarked for Mogilev are sent to AuschwitzBirkenau to be used in the disposal of murdered victims.

09 August 1942

The German Army Group A reaches the Maikop oilfields.

10 August 1942

Jews from Lvov are deported to the German death camp at Belzec.

11 August 1942

The German 6th Army reaches the Don.

19 August 1942

The Allies launch an amphibious assault on the Normandy coast at Dieppe. The assault was a disaster with the Allies losing nearly 50 per cent of their force to the German defenders.

23 August 1942

The German 14th Panzer Corp reaches Stalingrad.

23 August 1942

The Luftwaffe launch 600 bombers against Stalingrad.

End August 1942

Stalin makes Zhukov Deputy Supreme Commander and answerable only to him.

September 1942

Franz Stangle replaces the incompetent Eberl as camp commandant at the Treblinka death camp.

02 September 1942

The Battle for Stalingrad begins.

03 September 1942

An armed Jewish resistance to the Germans takes place in Lachva, Belarus.

10 September 1942

The German 48th Panzer Corp joins in for the battle for Stalingrad.

24 September 1942

General Franz Halder, Chief of Staff is sacked after telling Hitler that the Soviets are producing no fewer than 1,200 tanks a month and could easily recruit at least 1.5 million fresh troops to combat the German advance. Hitler, unhappy at what he sees as Halder’s defeatist attitude replaces him with the 47 year old Major-General Kurt Zeitzler. Keitel believed that Hitler had promoted the wrong man but Goring backed the appointment. Zeitzler was simply a ‘yes man’ and would do exactly as told.

24 September 1942

A Jewish uprising against the Germans in the Tuchin ghetto begins.

Early October 1942

Joseph Goebbels and Albert Speer Present their joint plan for total mobilisation of the country’s manpower and resources. Hitler promises to act but fails to do so.

15-23 October 1942

The Tractor factory in Stalingrad is captured by the Germans.

23 October 1942

The British launch a counter-offensive against Rommel’s Afrika Korp at El Alamein.

28 October 1942

The Germans start to deport the Jews from Theresienstadt to Auschwitz.

November 1942

British cryptologists read a top secret message that had been sent from the concentration camp

of Auschwitz asking for 600 gas masks to equip its new guards 01 November 1942

The Germans start to deport the Jews from the Bialystok District to Auschwitz.

05 November 1942

The British Eighth Army breaks through the German Afrika Korp’s fallback defence line at Fuka causing Erwin Rommel to order a full scale retreat.

05 November 1942

Europa Rescue Plan.

06 November 1942

Heinrich Himmler gives his support to a plan to set up a collection of Jewish skeletons especially the skulls at the Reich Anatomical Institute in Strasbourg near Natzweiler.

10 November 1942

The last attempt to clear Stalingrad from Soviet troops by von Paulus’s troops begins.

11 November 1942

The Germans and Italians occupy Vichy France. The Germans decided not to enter the French naval base at Toulon in case of heavy resistance.

11 November 1942

Heinrich Himmler instructs SS-Obergruppenfuhrer Friedrich Jeckeln to exterminate all remaining Jews in the Baltic States (renamed by the Nazis to Ostland). Some high ranking Nazi officials became alarmed at the thought of liquidating their Jewish slave labour and tried to get a reprieve for their much needed Jewish labour force.

19 November 1942

Zhukov launches Operation Uranus; a major counter-offensive around Stalingrad. The German 6th Army becomes entrapped within the city.

20 November 1942

Hitler discusses the situation about his 6th Army’s entrapment in Stalingrad with Goering by telephone. Goering was unduly alarmed by the news and felt things would improve in time.

27 November 1942

The French scuttle all their ships anchored at the Toulon n naval base to prevent them falling into enemy hands as the German troops and tanks rolled into the naval base.

27 November 1942

The Polish government-in-exile in London receive a report from the Polish underground on the liquidation of thousands of Jews and Soviet POWs in specially built gas chambers in the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp complex.

30 November 1942

The Nazis begin the liquidation of the Jewish Ghetto in Riga.

November 1942

Some14, 000 Latvian Jews are taken to a nearby forest and murdered at the hands of the German Einsatzkommados.

17 December 1942

The Allied governments issue a joint declaration denouncing Nazi-Germany’s mass killing of Europe’s Jews and promises to bring all those responsible to justice after the war.

12-24 December 1942

von Manstein attempts to relieve von Paulus’s beleaguered troops caught in Stalingrad but ends in failure.

31 December 1942

A cable is intercepted by the British which contains the statistics of the death tally of the Operation Reinhard death camps. They are: Majdanek

24,733

Sobibor

101,370

Belzec

434,508

Treblinka

713,555

Total

1,274,166

1943 08 January 1943

Joseph Goebbels, Albert Speer and Walther Funk goes through the draft document for total war with Hans Lammers, Wilhelm Keitel and Hitler’s personal secretary Martin Bormann

10 January 1943

The Soviets initiate Operation Ring. The operation is designed to squeeze the remainder of von Paulus’s 6th Army, still trapped in Stalingrad.

13 January 1943

Hitler signs a decree ordering the German nation to adopt total war.

14 January 1943

Field Marshal Erhard Milch is ordered by Hitler to take personal command for the Stalingrad airlift.

16 January 1943

In Holland, the first Jews arrive in the Vught concentration camp.

18 January 1943

Hitler appoints a committee to oversee his decree for ‘total war’

18 January 1943

Jews from the Warsaw Ghetto rebel against forced deportations. After fierce fighting the Germans withdrew from the Ghetto bewildered and humiliated.

23 January 1943

The British 8th Army in North Africa captures Tripoli from the Germans.

30/31 January 1943

The Germans discover that the Allies are using on-board radar in their bombers after one is shot over Rotterdam.

30 January 1943

von Paulus radios a message of greeting to his Fuhrer on the anniversary of his assumption of power. He tells his fuehrer that the Swastika still flutters over Stalingrad, he states that ‘May our struggle stand as an example to generations yet unborn never to surrender, no matter how desperate the odds’. That same night Hitler promotes von Paulus to Field Marshal.

31 January 1943

The battle for Stalingrad ends when von Paulus surrenders what remains of his 6th Army to the Soviets though a handful of German soldiers decide to fight on.

End January 1943

Benito Mussolini dismisses Marshal Cavallero as his Chief of the High Command.

16 February 1943

Heinrich Himmler orders the liquidation of the Warsaw Ghetto.

27 February 1943

Some 1,000 Berlin Jews are deported to the east.

28 February 1943

The RAF drop bombs on Berlin for the first time.

March 1943

The crematorium is opened at Birkenau (Auschwitz 2).

06 March 1943

The Battle of Medenine = This Battle took place in North Africa. Where Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korp faced Montgomery’s 8th Army in Southern Tunisia. After the German’s defeat, Rommel became convinced that his plans had been somehow compromised.

17 March 1943

Germany’s ally, Bulgaria, refuses to deport her Jewish population to German concentration camps.

22 March 1943

In Auschwitz-Birkenau, crematorium IV becomes operational.

23 March 1943

The Directorate of Civilian Resistance in Poland reports that a new crematorium in Auschwitz Birkenau is disposing of about 3,000 people per-day.

April 1943

In Auschwitz-Birkenau, crematorium V becomes operational.

April 1943

Yakov Stalin, Josef Stalin’s son, who had fallen into German hands and had been sent to Sachsenhausen concentration camp throws himself onto one of the camps wire fences and is shot dead by a guard.

07 April 1943

Hungary informs Germany that they have no intention to co-operate with their request to deport their country’s Jewish population to German concentration camps.

07 April 1943

Hitler meets with Mussolini at Salzburg. Hitler stresses to him that Africa will be defended against the Allies.

07 April 1943

Claus von Stauffenberg is wounded in Tunisia.

14 April 1943

The Main Directorate for Counter-Intelligence (SMERSH) is established in the Soviet Union.

19 April 1943

The Germans return to the Warsaw Ghetto to finish off Jewish resistance.

May 1943

The Polish government-in-exile in London gives the British Foreign Office a document about the killing process in the Nazi death camp at Treblinka.

12 May 1943

Some 238,000 Italian and German prisoners are taken by the Allies after the Axis forces in North Africa surrender.

16 May 1943

SS-Brigadefuhrer Jurgen Stroop, Commander of the German forces during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising sends a message to Himmler stating that resistance within the Ghetto is at an end and that the Jewish residential quarter is no longer a reality.

May 1943

Doctor Josef Mengele arrives in Auschwitz as chief doctor. His main tasks are to select prisoners deemed fit for work and those to be sent to the gas chambers. Mengele became infamously known simply as ‘the angel of death’ by prisoners. He viewed Auschwitz as one huge laboratory for his experiments on live men, women and children.

19 May 1943

Joseph Goebbels declares Berlin Jew-free.

25 May 1943

At Auschwitz Doctor Josef Mengele sends 507 Gypsies from one hut and a furthers 528 Gypsy women whom are suspected of having typhus to the gas chambers.

11 June 1943

Himmler orders that all Jews still within the confines of Ghettos to be moved to either concentration or death camps.

19 June 1943

Himmler informs Hitler that the clearing of Jews within the General-Government (occupied Poland) area is firmly underway.

21 June 1943

In Auschwitz 103 Jews are selected to be sent to Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace where they were are all measured, weighed and then murdered by gassing. Their bodies are sent to the Anatomical Institute in Strasbourg for testing.

July 1943

The head of the SS, Heinrich Himmler visits the Death camp of Sobibor in Poland.

05 July 1943

Hitler launches Operation Citadel in the East. The aim of the operation is to destroy soviet armies within the Kursk salient.

09 July 1943

British and American paratroopers land in Sicily in preparation of an Allied invasion of the island.

11 July 1943

The Allies start their invasion of Sicily.

24/25 July 1943

The RAF and USAAF start a bombing campaign on Hamburg.

July 1943

Biscari Massacre. Two separate incidents during the Sicilian Campaign of July-August 1943. Some 76 German and Italian prisoners of war were murdered (shot) by American troops.

24 July 1943

In Italy, the Fascist Grand Council vote to give the King of Italy full power as a way to save their country from disaster.

25 July 1943

The King of Italy removes Mussolini from office and has him arrested. He appoints Marshal Badoglio in his place.

28 July 1943

Mussolini resigns from office.

August 1943

More than 2,000 Jews are deported from Holland to the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz in Poland.

August 1943

The Polish government-in-exile informs the British government about the forced deportations of the Jews of Lublin as well as parts of the province of Bialystok. Most of the deportees are all murdered.

August 1943

The chairman of the British Joint Intelligence Committee believes the Poles and Jews are exaggerating about Nazi atrocities in the east, as a way to encourage the Allied governments to come to their aid much more quickly.

02 August 1943

Inmates at the Treblinka death camp stage a revolt.

20 August 1943

Hitler sacks Wilhelm Frick as his Minister of the Interior and replaces him with Himmler.

23 August 1943

British Lancaster bombers drop over 1800 tons of bombs on Berlin.

23 August 1943

The Red Army retakes Kharkov.

29 August 1943

The Germans assume full powers in Denmark after the Danes refuse to take repressive action against acts of resistance to German occupation. Since the occupation had begun, the Danes had been left alone and allowed to administer their own country without too much interference from the Nazis.

10 September 1943

The German army occupy Rome.

12/13 September 1943

Otto Skorzeny leads a German airborne force of commandos by gliders to rescue Mussolini from his Italian captures. The mission was a complete success and Mussolini is freed.

22 or 23 September 1943

Soviet Prisoner’s of war, all Jewish, are sent to the death camp of Sobibor as slave labour from Minsk.

25 September 1943

The Soviet army retake Smolensk.

28 September 1943

Italy surrenders to the Allies.

30 September 1943

The 33,771 Nazi victims who had been murdered and buried at Babi Yar near Kiev are exhumed and cremated by 325 Jewish and Soviet prisoners-of-war. After the work is done, the prisoners realise that they Germans plan to murder them also so they stage a rebellion. Out of the 325 only 15 prisoners managed to survive the revolt.

End September 1943

The Red Army retake the Donbas area from the Germans and they reach Dnieper river.

October 1943

In Germany, General-Fieldmarchall Milch attempts to build up the Luftwaffe’s fighter strength to protect the Reich from the increased threat of Allied air attacks, but is reprimanded by Reichsmarshal Goering, who believes that the West do not have the number of aircraft that Milch believes.

01/02 October 1943

In Denmark the Nazi authorities attempt to round up the country’s Jews for deportation. The German Plenipotentiary in Denmark; alerted the Jews of the impending round-up, so that they

could have time to escape. The Germans managed to capture just 284 Jews on the night of the 1st October, out of a Jewish population of 8,000. At the end of the action, the Nazis only managed to capture 500 Jews thanks to the bravery of the Danish population whom helped their fellow countrymen to escape. 02 October 1943

The Cretan town of Koustoyerako is burnt out by the German occupation forces after a revolt led by Mandi Bandervas fails.

13 October 1943

Italy declares war on Germany.

13 October 1943

The new government in Italy under Marshal Pietro Badoglio declare war on Germany.

14 October 1943

Inmates at the death camp of Sobibor initiate a mass breakout. Some 11 0r 12 SS men and more than 12 Ukrainian Guards are killed during the escape. Out of the 600 inmates 200 were shot during the breakout with a further 100 being captured during the manhunt that the Nazis initiated afterwards. A few of the survivors of the breakout joined local partisan groups and were killed during skirmishes with the Germans with only 64 surviving the war. In response to the breakout, Reichsfuhrer-SS Heinrich Himmler orders that the camp be dismantled. In an attempt to hide the fact that a death camp had been there, the SS disguise the area as a farm complex. During the lifetime of the camp it is estimated that no fewer than 250,000 people were murdered within its interiors.

16 October 1943

The Germans seize 1,000 Jews in Rome and are deported to Auschwitz.

November 1943

Arthur Liebehenschel is given command of Auschwitz.

06 November 1943

The Red Army recaptures the Ukrainian capital of Kiev.

09 November 1943

The first deportations of Jews from Italy to the death camps in the east begin.

18 November 1943

Some 411 RAF Lancaster bombers drop 1,593 tons of bombs on Berlin.

22-23 November 1943

The RAF attack Berlin with no fewer than 775 bombers.

21 December 1943

Hitler appoints Goebbels head of the newly created Reich Inspectorate of Civilian Air Protection Measures.

December 1943

Goering informs Erhard Milch that the Me-262 is to be used as a jet bomber.

December 1943

Hermann Goering sets off for Paris to organise Germany’s retaliatory raids (Operation Capricorn) London.

29 December 1943

Anne Frank writes in her diary ‘My fear makes me want to scream aloud...I have not enough Faith in God...’

Late 1943

In Auschwitz Doctor Mengele decides to use a radical way to disinfect block houses from typhus. He evicts some 600 Jewish women from one block, sends them to the gas chambers, disinfects the vacant block then moves another block of women prisoners into it and then goes on to disinfect their now vacant block and so on until all the blocks of huts are all disinfected. However this does not remove the typhus epidemic running rampant throughout the camp.

1944 January 1944

Hermann Goering gives the Fieseler company a contract to mass produce the V1, Hitler’s new vengeance weapon.

11 January 1944

Count Galeazzo Ciano executed.

20 January 1944

RAF attack Berlin with some 2,400 tons of bombs.

21 January 1944

Goering’s Operation Capricorn (retaliatory bombing raids) begins against London. The operation caused very little damage.

22 January 1944

An Allied army lands at Anzio in Italy.

27 January 1944

The Siege of Leningrad is finally lifted after the German army withdraws.

February 1944

The USAAF resumes their daylight bombing raids against German cities.

20 February 1944

The USAAF begin their five day attack on German aircraft industry targets dropping some 10,000 tons of bombs

03 February 1944

Within the last 2 years the Germans send their 67th deportation train to Auschwitz from Paris.

19-20 February 1944

The RAF loses 78 out of their 816 bombers after attacking targets in Leipzig.

20 February 1944

An order from Luftwaffe High Command is issued with an order to form a special force to carry

out specialist operations. This force is known as Kampfgeschwader 200 (KG200) 07 March 1944

The historian Emanuel Ringelblum, who had been hiding from the Nazis in the Aryan part of Warsaw is discovered and arrested by the Gestapo. Ringelblum had been documenting everything that he could about the fate of the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto. Alongside his family, he is tortured and killed.

08 March 1944

The USAAF attacks the German Erkner ball bearing factory in Berlin with 590 aircraft. The raid put the factory out of commission for some time.

11 March 1944

The German authorities deport some 300 women and children from northern Dalmatia to the concentration camp at Jasenovac in Croatia from the holding centre at Gospic. Not one survives.

15 March 1944

The Red Army crosses the River Bug, which had been the Germans main start line for Operation Barbarossa.

15 March 1944

The Germans begin a systematic search for more than 10,000 Jews in occupied Greece. At least half escape to the mountains were they either find shelter with local peasants or join local partisan units. Some mange to flee into neighbouring neutral Turkey.

18 March 1944

At the request of Hitler, Hungary’s Regent, Admiral Horthy visits him at the castle of Klessheim in Salzburg. At the meeting Hitler accuses the Regent of secretly holding peace talks with the allies and demanding him to sign a piece of paper which would allow German troops to occupy Hungary. After denying Hitler’s accusations Horthy attempts to leave but from he is prevented from doing so by a mock air raid which had been staged by the SS. After threats had been made against his family, Horthy capitulated and signed the document which allowed Germany to temporary occupy Hungary until a new pro-Nazi government is installed.

18 March 1944

The Red Army reaches the Romanian border.

20 March 1944

The Germans evacuate all prisoners from the Majdanek death camp in Poland prior to it being over-run by the advancing Soviet armies. Those prisoners who were sick were dispatched to the gas chambers in Auschwitz while the remainder were either sent to the concentration camps of Gross Rosen, Ravensbruck or Natzweiler.

12 March 1944

The SS in Germany start to plan out how to deal with Hungary’s Jews.

April 1944

A German reconnaissance plane spots the allies landing craft and other support vessels at Portsmouth, Southampton and the Isle of Wight. Goering passes this information onto Hitler.

15 April 1944

The Jewish population of Hungary are forced to leave their homes and move into specified ghettos.

25 April 1944

The Luftwaffe launches an attack on the allies’ landing craft that had been reported a few days earlier. The German raid caused little damage and disruption.

25 April 1944

Adolf Eichmann meets a Hungarian Jew by the name of Joel Brand, who is a leading figure in the Relief and Rescue Committee, an organisation committed in helping Jews escape Nazi persecution. Eichmann offers to sell one million Jews.

29 April 1944

The first trains carrying Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz-Birkenau begins.

15 March 1944

The deportations of Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz begin.

19 March 1944

Nazi total control is imposed on Hungary.

23 March 1944

The Germans begin the forced deportations of all of Greece’s Jews to the death camps. The deportation lasts ten days.

30-31 March 1944

The RAF suffer heavy losses after 96 out of 795 of their planes are shot down after attacking targets at Nuremberg.

April 1944

Jews in Albania are interned at Pristina and then deported to the concentration camp of BergenBelsen. Of the 400 deported only 100 survived the war.

09 April 1944

Two Jews, Rudolf Vrba and Alfred Wetzl, manage to breakout of Auschwitz and carry news of what is going on within that camp to the Allies in the West.

13 April 1944

The Germans send some 1,500 Jews, whom 148 where children under the age of 12, are deported from Paris to the death camp of Auschwitz.

15 April 1944

40 inmates of the Ponary Sonderkommando, who were forced to dig up the bodies of Nazi victims for cremation escape after digging a tunnel with either spoons or their bare hands. 25 however where later caught and executed whilst the other 15 managed to escape their pursuers.

15 April 1944

At Ponary in the General Government (Poland) a group of prisoners that was being used to help destroy the evidence of German mass murder stage an escape attempt. 25 were killed but 15 managed to evade their tormentors.

20 April 1944

The remaining members of the group that the Germans had used to exhume and cremate people whom they had murdered on an earlier date are they themselves murdered by their guards at Ponary in Poland.

May 1944

Large scale production of Hitler’s vengeance weapon, the V1 begins.

May 1944

Arnost Rosin and Czeslaw Mordowicz, two prisoners in Auschwitz manage to escape from the camp.

02 May 1944

In Britain, Major John Howard, commander of ‘D’ company, 2nd Oxfordshire and Buckinghamshire light Infantry, which is part of the Air Landing Brigade of the 6th Airborne Division is issued with Top Secret Orders marked ‘Bigot’. Howard and his men are to seize and hold at all costs, two strategically important bridges. One over the river Orne and the other at the Canal at Benouville and Ranville in Normandy, France. Howard and his men are to be the Spearhead for the invasion of France which has been set to take place in June 1944. Howard is given 2 extra platoons from his regiment plus 30 Sappers, a wing of glider pilots and 6 Horsa gliders to achieve is objectives. One of Howard’s officers, Lt ‘Den’ Brotheridge becomes the first allied soldier to be killed-in-action on D-Day.

09 May 1944

Rudolf Hoess orders preparations for the arrival of Hungarian Jews to be accelerated. He also orders that the furnaces at crematorium number 5 be repaired and that 5 pits be dug nearby for the burning of corpses.

15 May 1944

The Germans, who are now in control of Hungary, start the deportation process of the country’s Jewish population to the death camp at Auschwitz.

June 1944

With the advancing Red Army in the East, the Germans initiate its first ‘death marches’ from its concentration camps in the East.

June 1944

The War Refugee Board in Washington receive a request from Jacob Rosenheim of the Agudas Israel World Organisation to bomb the railway lines feeding Auschwitz.

04 June 1944

Hitler orders the withdrawal of all troops in Rome and declares it an open city.

05 June 1944

The American 5th Army march into Rome.

06 June 1944

The Allies land on the beaches of Northern France in Operation Overlord (D-Day). The liberation

of France begins. The Allies assembled a combat force of some (3 m ? ) 150,000 men, 20 million tons of war supplies. The Germans, who believed that the invasion would come through the Straights of Dover had strengthened their coastal defences there. The invasion however took place at the beaches of Normandy. (Utah, Omaha, Gold, Juno and Sword) and was the largest ever amphibian invasion ever to take place. It consisted of 7 battleships, 23 cruisers, 105 destroyers, 1,073 smaller warships, 4,126 landing craft and nearly 14,000 aeroplanes’ were deployed to support the landing. To combat this, the Luftwaffe could only manage to muster some 90 bombers and 70 fighters and their navy were just as bad. They had 3 warships, 36 high speed launchers and 309 mine sweepers. The Allied landing forces met with the German army groups ‘B’ and ‘G’ Army group ‘B’ came under the supreme command of Field Marshal Erwin Rommel whilst army group ‘G’ came under the supreme command of Field Marshal von Rundstedt. Allin-all, the Germans had 30 infantry divisions and 6 tank divisions to throw against the landings, however most of these units were badly equipped, and most of the men had the minimum of training and virtually no combat experience. 10 June 1944

Waffen SS troops massacre some 642 men, women and children at the village of Oradour-SurGlane in France.

18 June 1944

The British Broadcasting Authority (BBC) broadcast news about Auschwitz.

20 June 1944

The New York Times publishes the first of three articles about life in Auschwitz.

22 June 1944

The Soviets launch Operation Bagration, a massive offensive against the German Army Group Centre in Belorussia.

26 June 1944

The Americans reject Jacob Rosenheim’s request to bomb the railway lines leading to Auschwitz, stating other targets have a higher priority needs.

30 June 1944

1683 Hungarian Jews are allowed to board a train that will take them to safety. This was organised by Adolf Eichmann, as a good will gesture for ‘Jews for Trucks’ deal that he was trying to set up with the Western Allies via the Relief and Rescue Committee . The Western Allies had no interest in giving the Nazi war machine trucks in exchange for Jews. They knew that this could damage relations with their Soviet allies. Instead of taking the Jews to safety, the train took them to the concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen in Germany.

July 1944

The (Jewish) family camp in Auschwitz is liquidated. The family camp held around 18,000 men, women and children, most of whom had been deported to the camp from Theresienstadt in Czechoslovakia. The Nazis had planned to use these inmates as propaganda tools. The Jews had been forced to write letters, etc, home to inform the outside world that Auschwitz was not a bad

camp but a good one. 07 July 1944

London is asked to bomb Auschwitz. Churchill writes to his Foreign Secretary Anthony Eden, asking him to see what can be done.

09 July 1944

In Hungary, Horthy finally orders a stop to the deportation of his country’s Jewish population after threats from the Western Allies stating that they would hold him to count as a war criminal.

15 July 1944

Sir Archibald Sinclair, the Secretary of State for War, replies to Churchill and Anthony Eden stating that due to the distance of Auschwitz, no bombing raid could be launched. He in his letter suggested that the Americans be asked to do the job.

20 July 1944

In Hitler’s East Prussian headquarters in Rastenburg, German army officers attempt to assassinate Hitler. One of the officers placed a suitcase bomb next to the fuehrer but when it went off the Fuehrer survived.

August 1944

In Slovak, Jews take part in an uprising against the Germans.

August 1944

Himmler orders that the Kith and Kin system be adopted by the Gestapo when dealing with traitors. This allowed them to arrest the families of anyone suspected of treasonous activity. Family members could either be executed or be imprisoned in a concentration camp

01 August 1944

The Polish partisans in Warsaw stage an uprising against the Germans.

01 August 1944

Diarist Anne frank unknowingly logs her last entry in her diary.

02-03 August 1944

Almost all of the Gypsies in the ‘family camp’ in Auschwitz are sent to the gas chambers.

23 August 1944

The Allies liberate Paris.

31 August 1944

The prisoner within Natzweiler concentration camp in Alsace are liberated as the Allied armies continue to push forward. It is estimated that at least 25,000 Nazi victims perished within the confines of this camp during its existence.

September 1944

The first operational V1 rockets are fired at allied targets.

04 September 1944

The Allies liberate Antwerp and Brussels in Belgium.

17-26 September 1944

The Allies launch Operation Market Garden. The operation is designed to outflank the German defensive line known as the ‘West Wall’ by establishing a bridgehead across the Lower Rhine at the Dutch town of Arnhem. If successful, it is believed that it will shorten the war. But unknown to the Allies, the remnants of 2 SS Panzer Divisions (9th and 10th) were refitting in the area and had just completed an exercise on how to repel an airborne landing. Operation Market (or Battle of Arnhem) failed to gain a bridgehead across the Lower Rhine, but the Allies did manage to attain a valuable salient from which Operation Veritable was launched during the battle for Germany in February 1945.

19 September 1944

Hans-Adolf Prutzmann, Higher-SS and Police leader who had carried out political and racial murders in the east, is appointed General-Inspector for Special Abwehr with the Reichsfuhrer-SS. This job entails the setting up of guerrilla resistance fighters, nicknamed ‘Werewolves’. Their task is to establish quasi-style military units that is capable of harassing enemy troops on German soil. They also have been given the power to execute any German whom collaborates with occupying enemy forces.

Autumn 1944

The German age of conscription is amended to include boys between 15 and 18 years old and men between 50 and 60 years old. This produced a figure of around a half a million extra would-be soldiers that could be used against the enemy.

Early October 1944

Reich Youth Leader Arthur Axmann instructs Oberbannfuhrer Kloos, one of his HJ Leaders in Western Germany, to organise the Hitler Youth into a large-scale resistance movement, aimed at attacking the allies as they penetrated into the Reich.

06-07 October 1944

The Jewish Sonderkommando’s at one of the crematoria in Auschwitz-Birkenau stage a revolt.

15 October 1944

Himmler orders the Anatomical Institute in Strasbourg to destroy all the skeletons that they have assembled before they can fall into Allied hands.

20 November 1944

Hitler leaves his Wolfs Lair (Wolfsschanze) in East Prussia to return to Berlin for a minor throat operation.

10 December 1944

Hitler leaves Berlin for his new headquarters just under forty kilometres from Frankfurt am Main. This new field headquarters’ is named Alderhorst (Eagles’ Eyrie) and it is here that he plans to oversee the main German attack against the Allies in the West.

16 December 1944

The Germans launch a major counter-attack in the West. This assault becomes known as ‘the Battle of the Bulge’.

17 December 1944

Malmedy Massacre = Mass execution of US POWs by SS-StandartenFuhrer (Colonel) Joachim Peiper’s special Kampfgruppe (Battle group) during the Ardennes campaign. Some 86 POWs are murdered whereas 43 survive.

Late 1944

Because of a shortage of prisoner food in the Auschwitz concentration camp, Doctor Josef Mengele , who at this stage is still in control of the Women’s camp, sends all the women to the gas chambers to save food. During the next ten nights convoys of trucks, their headlights stabbing into the darkness, each bearing human cargo of eighty women, filled the air with their screams, though some of Mengele’s victims sat mute, paralysed with fear.

1945 January 1945

Around 9,000 Nazi murder victims are exhumed at the Plaszow concentration camp in Poland (about 55km east of Auschwitz and some 10km south-east of Cracow) and cremated. This is a desperate attempt by the Nazi murderers to hide evidence of mass murder. This scene is repeated at various sites around the east.

01 January 1945

The British government refuses to recognise the Stalin backed provisional Polish government in Lublin.

05 January 1945

In Germany Montgomery is appointed as Supreme Allied Commander north of the Ardennes.

09 January 1945

General Guderian visits Hitler at his at Ziegenberg and informs him that his intelligence indicates that the soviets have some 8,000 planes concentrated on the Vistula and East Prussian fronts. Goering, who was in attendance, denies that the Russians have so many planes and claims that most of these planes are decoys. Keitel also in attendance backs Goering’s view. Hitler agrees with Goering and Keitel and dismisses the numbers giving.

12 January 1945

At 5am Moscow time the Red Army launch their Vistula offensive with Konev’s 1st Ukrainian Front attacking the German lines out of the Sandomierz bridgehead.

17 January 1945

Jewish inmates capable of walking are forced onto the death marches from the death camp at Auschwitz to the West. Himmler does not want one single victim to fall into the arms of the advancing Red Army alive.

17 January 1945

Soviet troops enter Warsaw. They also overrun the Silesian coalfields thus removing around 60

per cent of Germany’s supply of coal. 21 January 1945

The Hungarian government declares war on Germany.

23 January 1945

The SS execute Count Helmuth James von Moltke, Erwin Planck and Eugen Bolz alongside other conspirators linked with the July plot to assassinate Hitler. The executions took place within the walls of Plotzensee prison in Berlin.

27 January 1945

The Red Army reaches the river Oder.

27 January 1945

The Red Army liberates Auschwitz.

30 January 1945

Hitler gives his last address to the nation.

30 January 1945

Albert Speer, Hitler’s chief architect and Minister for Armaments and War Production sends Hitler a memorandum pointing out that raw materials’ are dangerously low in supply and he bluntly points out that ‘the war is lost’.

30 January 1945

During a distribution of food within the working class of Neukollen in Berlin, a riot broke out as cold and hungry citizens tried to seize the supplies. Several women were killed by the police when they overturned a wagon full of potatoes.

31 January 1945

The Red Army crosses the River Oder just north of Frankfurt an der Oder. They are now just some forty miles from Berlin.

February 1945

The Hungarian capital, Budapest is captured by the Red Army.

February 1945

Argonaut, the codename for the Allied conference in Yalta begins in the Crimea. The aim of the conference is to discuss the division of a post-war Germany.

02 February 1945

Ecuador declares war on Germany.

02 February 1945

The Red Army capture Stettin

02 February 1945

The Germans launch punitive counterattacks against the newly established Soviet Oder bridgeheads.

03 February 1945

In Malta, President Roosevelt and the British Prime Minister Winston Churchill board planes that will take them to the Yalta Conference where they meet up with the Soviet leader, Josef Stalin.

03 February 1945

Berlin suffers from a severely heavy bombing raid from the US Air Force where it is estimated that some 3,000 died. One of the victims of the raid was the notorious Nazi Judge and President of the People’s Court, Roland Freisler who was crushed to death whilst sheltering in the courts cellar.

06 February 1945

Eva Braun celebrates her last birthday.

08 February 1945

Paraguay declares war on Germany.

09 February 1945

Eva Braun leaves Berlin for Berchtesgaden with her sister Gretl Fegelein.

09 February 1945

British and Canadian forces reach the Rhine.

12 February 1945

The German hospital ship, the General von Steuben with some2,680 wounded on board is torpedoed after leaving Pillau. Most of the passengers drown.

13 February 1945

Peru declares war on Germany.

14 February 1945

Chile declares war on Germany.

14 February 1945

Dresden is bombed to rubble as the Allies launch a day and night air attack on the city.

14 February 1945

In Southern Pomerania, the so-called Fortress town of Schneidemuhl falls to the Red Army.

16 February 1945

Venezuela declares war on Germany.

16 February 1945

The Pomeranian offensive. Operation Sonnenwende otherwise known as the Stargard tank battle is launched under General Wenck. The aim of the operation is to smash into Zhukov’s right flank thus maintaining a link between East Prussia and Pomerania as well as deterring the Red Army from pushing straight onto Berlin from their current positions and thereby allowing time to prepare strong defences for defence of Berlin.

17 February 1945

After a military briefing with Hitler, General Walther Wenck is badly hurt as he fell asleep at the wheel of his motor vehicle and crashed as he returned to his headquarters on the eastern front.

18 February 1945

The German offensive in the east, Operation Sonnenwende becomes bogged down in the mud.

23 February 1945

Uruguay declares war on Germany.

23 February 1945

Turkey states that it will declare war on Germany.

24 February 1945

In Cairo, Premier Ahmed Maher is shot dead after reading his country’s declaration of war on Germany and Japan.

26 February 1945

Syria declares war on Germany.

27 February 1945

Lebanon declares war on Germany.

27 February 1945

The Western Allies enter Monchengladbach in West Germany.

28 February 1945

The United States of America signs a lend-lease with France.

01 March 1945

Saudi Arabia declares war on Germany.

01 March 1945

The city of Monchengladbach falls into Allied hands as the German army cease fighting in and around the city.

02 March 1945

Finland declares war on Germany.

06 March 1945

The Western Allies capture Cologne.

07 March 1945

Eva Braun returns to Berlin to be close to Hitler.

08 March 1945

The commander of the Allied 3rd Armoured Division, General Maurice Ross is assassinated by Werewolf members in Paderborn in Germany.

12 March 1945

Anne Frank dies in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp.

18-23 March 1945

On the Eastern Front, the Red Army fails to break through the German 18th Army lines.

18 March 1945

The United States Air Force attack 8 Soviet planes flying between Berlin and Kustrin thinking them to be German. The Soviet authorities protest claiming that they lost 6 of their planes in the dog fight.

19 March 1945

Hitler orders a scorched earth policy as the Allies push deep into Germany.

20 March 1945

Heinz Guderian convinces Himmler to give up his command of his army group, pleading that he’s overtaxed. Hitler reluctantly agrees and at Guderian’s suggestion appoints Colonel General Gotthard Heinrici the new commander. Heinrici’s job is to defend 280 km (175 miles) of land from the Baltic south along the Oder to its confluence with the Neisse River in Silesia.

20 March 1945

The Yugoslavians launch an offensive in against the Germans in Dalmatia.

21 March 1945

Berlin, as a city has been reduced to rubble. Nearly 314 air raids on the city has utterly destroyed its infrastructure. More than half of its housing stock is now uninhabitable, with over 50,000 of its inhabitants dead and a further 100,000 injured.

21 March 1945

Guderian is told to take sick leave by Hitler after a heated argument. Guderian tells Hitler that he could not take any sick leave on the grounds that General Wenck was still recovering from injuries sustained from his car accident and General Krebs wounded in a bombing raid whilst in Zossen the week before.

22 March 1945

In Germany Albert Kesselring replaces von Rundstedt as commander in the west.

23 March 1945

The Soviets split the German 2nd Army into three groups, that being on Hela, Gotenhofen and Danzig.

23 March 1945

Colonel General Loehr is made the German Supreme Commander South-East

24 March 1945

The US appointed Mayor of Aachen Karl Oppenhoff is assassinated by a group of youths claiming to represent the resistance group the ‘Werewolves’.

25 March 1945

Montgomery bans British troops from fraternising with German citizens.

26 March 1945

Britain’s Field Marshal Montgomery issues an order to his troops forbidding fraternisation with German civilians.

26 March 1945

Albert Speer returns to Berlin where he is confronted by Hitler who accuses him of believing that then war is lost, which he sees as treasonous. Hitler tells him that he should go on leave but Speer offers his resignation as his Armaments Minister instead which Hitler bluntly rejects.

27 March 1945

Hitler issues new orders demanding the total destruction of all transport and communication systems before they fall into enemy hands.

27 March 1945

Argentina declares war on Germany

27 March 1945

The Germans launch a counter-attack to retake Kursrin but the operation is a disaster.

27 March 1945

Britain’s Field Marshal Montgomery sends an urgent cable to Supreme HQ of the Allied Expeditionary Force, pleading with Eisenhower for permission to lead a powerful thrust towards Berlin. The request is denied.

27 March 1945

The last V2 Rocket falls on London.

27 March 1945

Leaders from the Polish underground resistance movement are invited to meet Marshal Zhukov, and are immediately arrested and imprisoned.

29 March 1945

Albert Speer returns back to Berlin and approaches sympathetic generals and Gauleiters’ to try to dissuade them from carrying out Hitler’s scorched earth policy arguing that Germany will need an infrastructure to rebuild their country after the war is over.

29 March 1945

Zhukov boards a plane to fly back to Moscow but due to bad weather his plane has to land at Minsk and later takes a train straight to Moscow to attend a meeting with Stalin.

29 March 1945

The Red Army crosses the Austrian frontier.

30 March 1945

The Red Army captures Danzig.

31 March 1945

General Eisenhower issues an order preventing Field Marshal Montgomery from advancing on Berlin.

End of March 1945

Two Hitler Youth members, one 16 years old and the other 17 years old are sentenced to death by a US court-martial in Germany. It was claimed that both of the boys were part of a Werewolf unit sniping at Allied troops in and around Aachen. (see 5th June 1945)

Early April 1945

Himmler issues an order stating that anyone who displace a white flag from their homes are to be shot.

01 April 1945

The German Army Group B is encircled by the 1st and 9th US Armies at Lippstadt in the Ruhr.

01 April 1945

A special appeal is broadcasted to the German people urging them to enlist within the newly established partisan units (Werewolf) within their area.

01 April 1945

Marshals’ Zhukov and Konev meet Stalin in the Kremlin in Moscow to discuss the final push on Berlin.

01-15 April 1945

Some 96,000 German wounded, 81,000 refugees and 66,000 other German soldiers are evacuated by sea from the Hela pocket in the East.

02 April 1945

General Bradley’s 12th Army group and the US 9th Army complete the encirclement of the Ruhr, trapping Field Marshal Walter Model’s Army Group B’s 325,000 men.

03 April 1945

Zhukov leaves Moscow to return to his headquarters to make final preparations for the assault on Berlin.

04 April 1945

Osnabruck falls to the Allies.

05 April 1945

Hitler transfers 4 of Heinrici’s panzer units to defend Prague. The Reich’s-chancellery is now under complete bombardment from Russian artillery.

05 April 1945

The last V2 rockets of the war are fired at Liege, Antwerp and Brussels.

05 April 1945

The Soviets launch their assault on Vienna.

06 April 1945

The Red Army launches their attack on Konigsberg in East Prussia.

07 April 1945

At the Luftwaffe base at Stendal in Germany, 184 ME109s and 2 ME262s (a new jet plane) begins ‘Operation Werewolf’ against US bombers cruising over Germany. The two ME262s deliberately lure the bomber’s fighter escort away thus allowing the ME109s to carry out a ramming operation against the unprotected bombers. 133 German fighters were destroyed in the attack with only 77 of their pilots survived whilst the Americans lost only 23 heavy bombers and six fighters. Operation Werewolf had been an attempt to inflict heavy damage on the attacking American bombers but it had failed miserably.

09 April 1945

The Red Army captures Konigsberg in East Prussia.

09 April 1945

The British 8th Army launches its offensive on the Adriatic coast of Italy.

11 April 1945

The US 2nd Armoured Division takes Magdeburg on the Elbe River, 140Km (87 miles) south-west of Berlin.

11 April 1945

In Paris the Vichy police chief and collaborator Lucien Rottee is sentenced to death.

11 April 1945

US troops capture Buchenwald concentration camp.

12 April 1945

Martin Bormann, along with Keitel and Himmler sign an order demanding that all German cities be defended to the utmost.

13 April 1945

Vienna falls to the Soviet army.

13 April 1945

A second bridgehead is established by the US 9th Army on the Elbe River.

13 April 1945

The Allies liberate the concentration camps of Bergen-Belsen and Buchenwald.

13 April 1945

Prisoners from the concentration camp at Dora-Mittelbau are murdered by the German police and members of the Hitler Youth. ‘One night we stopped near the town of Gardelegen. We lay down in a field and several Germans went to consult about what they should do. They returned with a lot of young people from the Hitler Youth and with members of the police force from the town. They chased us all into a large barn. Since we were 5-6,000

people, the wall of the barn collapsed from the

pressure of the mass of people, and many of us fled. The Germans poured out petrol and set the barn on fire. Several thousand people were burned alive. Those of us who had managed to escape, lay down in the nearby wood and heard the heart-rending screams of the victims. This was April 13th. One day later the place was conquered by Eisenhower’s army. When the Americans got there, the bodies were still burning’.

14 April 1945

The 5th US Army launches an offensive in Italy against the German defenders.

14 April 1945

Arnhem is liberated by British troops.

15 April 1945

The Soviet 9th Guards capture St Poelten in Austria and halts its advance westward.

15 April 1945

The German Twelfth Army under General Wenck launches a strong counter-attack against the US 83rd Infantry Division near Zerbst but are successfully repulsed.

15 April 1945

Hitler orders Field Marshal Busch to be the military commander in the north-west in event that Germany is cut into two by the advancing Allied armies.

16 April 1945

The German 12th Army smashes the 9th US Army’s bridgeheads on the east bank of the Elbe River.

16 April 1945

The 1st Ukrainian and 1st White Russian Fronts open the attack on Berlin.

18-19 April 1945

the last British air raid on Berlin takes place.

19 April 1945

The British 2nd Army reaches the Elbe River at Lauenberg.

20 April 1945

Hitler celebrates his fiftieth birthday knowing it would be his last.

20 April 1945

Hitler divides Germany into a northern zone under Admiral Doenitz and a southern zone under Field Marshal Kesselring.

20 April 1945

Red Army artillery bombards the centre of Berlin.

20 April 1945

The US 1st Army captures Leipzig.

21 April 1945

Polish troops serving with the British 8th Army seize Bologna.

21 April 1945

Field Marshal Model commits suicide after his Army Group B surrenders to the Western Allies after it has been trapped in the Ruhr Pocket.

22 April 1945

Hitler informs his staff that he intends to remain in Berlin.

23 April 1945

Himmler along with SS-General Walther Schellenberg meets secretly with the Swedish Red Cross representative Count Folke Bernadette in the Swedish consulate in Lubeck. Himmler, claiming for himself the powers of the Fuhrer, proposes to contact the Western Allies with the offer of surrender, whilst continuing the war in the East. Schellenberg had for months tried to get Himmler to break his ties with Hitler and to use his power to end the war.

23 April 1945

Hermann Goering sends a message to Hitler asking the Fuhrer to allow him to take over as Fuhrer of Germany as he believed that Hitler was no longer in a position to lead Germany. ‘My Fuhrer!’ In view of your decision to remain in the fortress of Berlin, do you agree that I take over at once the total leadership of the Reich, with full freedom of action at home and abroad as your deputy, in accordance with your decree of 29 June 1941. If no reply is received by 2200 hrs tonight. I shall take it for granted that

you have lost your freedom of action, and shall consider your decree as fulfilled, and shall act for the best interests of our country and people. You know what I feel for you in this gravest hour of my life. Words fail me to express myself. May God protect you, and speed you quickly here in spite of all. You’re Loyal Hermann Goering When Goering’s message reaches Hitler’s bunker, Martin Bormann uses it to enrage Hitler and to see it as treasonous. Hitler sends Goering his reply stating that Goering is now guilty of treason, and the penalty for treason is death, but in view of his long service to the Party and state, his life is spared, provided that he immediately resigns all his offices. The message required an immediate yes or no. Bormann issues instructions in the name of the Fuhrer to the SS HQ in Berchtesgaden which places Goering and his staff in SS custody by the morning of the next day. Hitler replaces Goering as commander of the now defunct Luftwaffe with the newly promoted Field Marshal Ritter von Greim. 23 April 1945

The British 2nd Army reaches Hamburg

24 April 1945

The 1st Belorussian 3rd Army links up with the 1st Ukrainian 28th Army at Teupnitz, thereby completing the encirclement of the German 9th Army however elements of the 9th Army manage to escape the Soviet encirclement and link up with the 12th Army which is withdrawing to the Elbe River.

24 April 1945

Keitel and Jodl leave Berlin for Rheinsberg where they try to organise a way to raise the siege of Berlin.

24 April 1945

Konev’s Soviet forces break through Berlin’s defences and pushes into the city itself. In doing so enraged Zhukov, who wanted to be the man who entered Berlin first.

24 April 1945

The British 8th Army take Ferrara.

24 April 1945

The American 5th Army enters La Spezia and reach the Po north-west of Bologna.

25 April 1945

Berlin is completely surrounded and is now cut off from the rest of the Reich by the Red Army.

25 April 1945

Units of the American 1st Army meet up with the Soviet 5th Guards at Torqau.

25 April 1945

The Allies capture Mantua, Reggio and Parma in Italy

25 April 1945

The Charter of the United Nations is adopted in the San Francisco conference.

26 April 1945

The last remaining telephone lines in Berlin to the outside world are cut, communications are now only possible via radio.

26 April 1945

The Red Army captures Bruenn in Czechoslovakia.

26 April 1945

The American 5th Army capture Verona.

26 April 1945

The British 2nd Army captures Bremen.

27 April 1945

SS-Gruppenfuhrer Hermann Fegelein, Heinrich Himmler’s liaison officer at Fuhrer headquarters, and brother-in-law to Eva Braun, leaves the bunker in Berlin without permission.

27 April 1945

In Vienna, a provisional government is set up under Karl Renner.

27 April 1945

The American 5th Army reaches Genoa.

28 April 1945

The German 12th Army’s offensive to relieve Berlin fails.

28 April 1945

SS-Gruppenfuhrer Hermann Flegelein is arrested and sentenced to death after being found guilty of trying to flee Berlin without permission. He is taken outside into the rubble streets and shot.

29 April 1945

Italian Partisans kill Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci along with other Fascist leaders.

29 April 1945

The German military leadership of Army Group C sign the instrument of surrender, though the cessation of hostilities will not come into effect until 2nd May.

29 April 1945

Venice is captured by the British 56th Division.

29 April 1945

Hitler marries Eva Braunn and then dictates his last will and political testament to his secretary in which he nominates Doenitz as President of the Reich.

29 April 1945

The American 7th Army liberate the concentration camp Dachau.

May 1945

Professor Karl von Aiken, an otolaryngologist, carries out a minor operation on Hitler’s throat for ablated polyps.

30 April 1945

Hitler and his wife of a couple of hours, Eva, commit suicide and their bodies are taken to the Chancellery gardens where they are cremated.

30 April 1945

Soviet troops hoist the Red Banner over the Reichstag building at 1430 hrs.

30 April 1945

The ‘Ulbricht Group’ set out from Moscow to Berlin to set up Stalin’s puppet government in the occupied Soviet zone of Germany.

30 April 1945

the American 7th Army captures Munich.

30 April 1945

The US 5th Army seizes Turin.

30 April 1945

The Yugoslav’s reach the outskirts of Trieste.

01 May 1945

Doenitz is informed that Hitler had him promoted to Reich’s President by Martin Bormann, Bormann also informs him that Hitler had committed suicide.

01 May 1945

In Berlin, Goebbels sends out a German delegation to the meet with the Red Army leadership to discuss an end to hostilities. When the delegation returns with the Russian ultimatum, he rejects it and the Soviet’s respond with full force against the last remaining German defences.

01 May 1945

In the bunker in Berlin, Goebbels’s orders the killing of his children by poison. Afterwards he and his wife Magda commits suicide by biting down on a cyanide capsule followed by shooting themselves. Petrol is thrown over their bodies and they are set alight, however, they are not totally cremated and the Red Army remove their charred remains for forensic tests later.

01 May 1945

In Germany, Field Marshal von Rundstedt is captured by the Allies.

01 May 1945

At 2230 hrs, the German people are notified by a radio bulletin of Hitler’s death.

02 May 1945

Admiral Doenitz moves his headquarters to Flensburg. He sacks Ribbentrop as Foreign Minister and appoints Scherin von Krosignk in his place.

02 May 1945

Martin Bormann and Dr Stumpfegger die while trying to escape from Berlin.

02 May 1945

The Germans leadership within the Berlin Bunker send a four man delegation over to the Soviets to discuss the total cessation of hostilities. Hans Fritzsche, now director of the Propaganda Ministry informs Zhukov by note that ‘Doctor Goebbels is no longer among the living. I, as one

of the remaining alive, beg you to take Berlin under your protection. My name is well known’. Zhukov accepts the German’s wish for unconditional surrender, however there would be sporadic and isolated fighting which would last a further few days before the Battle for Berlin was finally over. The Red Army would take over 134,000 prisoners, but they would lose nearly 304,900, either killed in action or wounded or missing. Some 100,000 civilians died during the battle.

02 May 1945

Grand-Admiral Karl Donitz, Hitler’s successor as President of the Reich and Supreme commander Of the German armed forces issues an appeal to the German people and to members of the Military. The appeal reads: German men and women! Soldiers of the German army! Our Fuhrer, Adolf Hitler has fallen. The German people bow their deepest mourning and reverence. He saw the terrible dangers of Bolshevism on and he devoted all his life to the struggle against it. This struggle and his unshakeably straight path was ended by his historic death in the capital of the Reich. Until the very end, his life was devoted to the good of Germany. His struggle against Bolshevism was for Europe and the whole civilised world’ The Fuhrer appointed me as his successor. With full responsibility, I assume the leadership of the German people at this difficult hour that will decide our fate. My first task is to save the German people from the attacking Bolshevik enemy. The armed struggle is being continued only for this aim. And as long as the British and the Americans are preventing it, we will have to continue our defence against them. In this case, the British and the Americans continue fighting, not in the interest of their own people but for the dissemination of of Bolshevism in Europe. What the German people suffered during the war on on the battlefield, as well as on the home front, is unmatched in history. In this trying time of need and hardship, I shall try my best to support tolerable living living conditions for our heroic men, women and children. To do this I need your help. Believe me, because your path is my path. Support order and discipline in towns and villages. Each of you must perform your duties at your assigned post. In this way, we shall be able to lessen the suffering that will confront all of us in the near future. If we do our best, God will not abandon us after all this suffering and sacrifice. Signed Donitz. `

02 May 1945

Elements of the US 6th Airborne Division link up with the Red Army at Wismar.

02 May 1945

The RAF launches their last bombing raids on German targets. Kiel is bombed whilst a raid is carried out upon Lubeck where a number of ships loaded with refugees and concentration camp prisoners are hit including the Arcona, where 7,000 prisoners are killed.

03 May 1945

The US 7th Army captures Innsbruck whilst element of VI Corps are sent to the Brenner Pass to link up with the American 5th Army.

03 May 1945

The British 2nd Army enters Hamburg.

04 May 1945

All German forces remaining in north-western Germany, Holland and Denmark surrenders to Field Marshal Montgomery at his headquarters on Luneburg Heath.

04 May 1945

German Army Group G surrenders to the American General Devers thus ending the war in Bavaria and western Austria.

05 May 1945

All German forces in southern Germany surrender to the Americans.

05 May 1945

Under Count von Krosink, a government is formed in Austria to carry on Reich business.

05 May 1945

American troops capture Linz.

05 May 1945

In Yugoslavia, remnants of the German Army Group G move northward in an attempt to reach the Austrian border so that they can surrender to the western Allies.

05 May 1945

In Prague, a rebellion takes place against the Germans.

05 May 1945

All German forces stationed in Norway surrender to the Allies.

06 May 1945

The last German convoys leave German ports for Hela in an attempt to rescue as many Germans that are fleeing from the advancing Red Army. Some 43,000 people are rescued in this operation but the Port of Hela is captured by the Soviets.

06 May 1945

The Red Army launches its final assault on the remnants of Schoerner’s Army Group in Czechoslovakia.

06 May 1945

Breslau, which was regarded as a ‘fortress city’ falls to the Red army.

06 May 1945

Under Patton, the American V Corps captures Pilsen.

06 May 1945

Eisenhower orders the 3rd Army to halt their advance into Czechoslovakia.

06 May 1945

The American 5th Army enters Austria from the south.

06 May 1945

Admiral Doenitz relieves Himmler from all offices.

07 May 1945

At Eisenhower’s headquarters at Reims, the Germans sign the document of unconditional surrender of all German armed forces throughout the Reich and occupied countries. The capitulation will take effect at 0001 hrs on 9th May.

07 May 1945

The battered remnants of the German 12th Army surrender to the Americans.

07 May 1945

Soviet forces reach the line at Wismar-Schwerin-Wittenberge.

07 May 1945

A 220,000 strong Croatian force that had been serving alongside the Germans try to fight their way out of Yugoslavia to Austria, but is stopped by the British 8th Army and by members of Tito’s Yugoslavian forces.

08 May 1945

Oskar Schindler, along with his wife Emile and eight Jewish inmates leave Brinnlitz in his Mercedes followed by a truck pulling two trailers. Valuables are stuffed within the interior doors of the Mercedes. The Schindler Jews also sign a letter explaining his role in their survival.

08 May 1945

British Prime Minister and President Truman proclaim ‘Victory in Europe Day’ (VE Day).

09 May 1945

The surrender of the German military machine takes effect after the articles of surrender is signed at the Soviet headquarters in Berlin.

09 May 1945

Hermann Goering gives himself up to the Americans.

09 May 1945

Higher-SS and Police leader for the Rhenish Palatinate and Hesse-Nassau, Jurgen Stroop surrenders to the Americans disguised as a reserve officer in the Wehrmacht.

09 May 1945

The Channel Islands are finally liberated.

10 May 1945

The Soviets capture some 208,000 German troops with the surrender of the Army Group Kurland.

10 May 1945

The Red Army take control of Prague.

10 May 1945

The Germans that had been holding out at Dunkirk finally surrender.

11 May 1945

The Czech government in exile returns to Prague.

11-12 May 1945

Higher-SS and Police leader Hans-Adolf Prutzmann is captured along with other officers by British troops at Hoenlied near Eckernforde.

12 May 1945

The Serbian regiments that fought alongside the Germans surrender to the British 8th Army, but are handed over to the Yugoslavian Partisan forces. The Yugoslavs murder or imprison all those who collaborated with the Germans.

13 May 1945

Field Marshal Keitel is arrested by the Allies as a war criminal and Jodl takes over as Chief of OKW.

14 May 1945

Some 150,000 Germans are taken prisoner by the Red Army in East Prussia as the German Army Group there surrenders.

Mid May 1945

The British transfer Hans-Adolf Prutzmann, Higher-SS and Police leader, to Field-Marshal Montgomery’s intelligence headquarters at Luneburg. The interrogators suggest to Prutzmann that he will be handed over to the Soviets because of the war-crimes he had committed in the east. Prutzmann commits suicide after biting on a cyanide capsule that he had managed to conceal on himself.

15 May 1945

Some 80,000 Croatian soldiers and about 30,000 civilians, mostly women and children are murdered by Tito’s Yugoslavian partisan forces.

17 May 1945

The Soviet press criticises the Doenitz government in Flensburg.

23 May 1945

The Allies finally arrest members of the Doenitz government which in essence brings the curtain finally down on Hitler’s Third Reich.

23 May 1945

Heinrich Himmler, a prisoner of the British, commits suicide in Luneburg

25 May 1945

Under pressure from the Allies the Yugoslavian partisans which had been occupying parts of Carinthia in Austria, pull out of Klagenfurt.

29 May 1945

The British traitor and pro-Nazi propagandist William Joyce, AKA Lord Haw Haw, is arrested.

05 June 1945

Two Hitler Youth members whom had been sentenced to death for Werewolf activities in and

around Aachen are executed. 15 June 1945

The Nazi Foreign Minister von Ribbentrop is captured by the British.

17 July 1945

The Potsdam Conference begins just outside Berlin.

15 August 1945

Field Marshal Petain, Nazi collaborator and political leader of Vichy France is found guilty of high treason and is sentenced to death, however General de Gaulle reprieves Petain on account of his old age.

20 August 1945

In Oslo, Norway, The Nazi puppet Premier Vidkun Abraham Quisling, goes on trial for high treason.

10 October 1945

In France, Joseph Darnand, the pro-Nazi French militia leader is executed after being found guilty for high treason.

15 October 1945

The French Nazi collaborator Pierre Laval; A Vichy leader, is shot dead by firing squad after being found guilty of high treason.

24 October 1945

The Norwegian Nazi collaborator Vidkun Abraham Quisling is executed by firing squad after being found guilty of high treason. The name Quisling is known synonymous with treason.

1946 08 March 1946

Frau Hoess (Rudolf Hoess’s wife) is arrested and imprisoned and questioned about the whereabouts of her husband by British intelligence. The British trick her into revealing his whereabouts by telling her that her 3 sons would be deported to Siberia unless she informs on her husband. The bluff works and Frau Hoess tells the British what they want to know.

11 March 1946

At 11pm, Rudolf Hoess, the former commandant at the death camp of Auschwitz, is captured by the British whilst hiding on a farm at Gottruepel near Flensburg

20 June 1946

In Poznam, Poland - Arthur Grieser, Hitler’s appointed overlord of Polish Warthegau is executed by hanging for crimes committed against the Polish people during the German occupation of Poland.

01 October 1946

Alfred Rosenberg is executed for War crimes committed during the war.

1947

1948 28 January 1948

The former deputy commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp, Almeier is executed after facing trial in a Polish court the previous year.

1949 June 1949

Karl Wolf is sentenced to four years imprisonment for being a senior member of the SS. He is released two-weeks later because of the time he had already spent in prison awaiting trial.

1960 11 May1960

Adolf Karl Eichmann is kidnapped by Israeli special forces (Mossad) whilst living in Buenos Aires, Argentina.

1961 15 December 1961

Adolf Karl Eichmann is sentenced to death after being found guilty of war crimes by an Israeli Court.

1962 January 1962

Karl Wolf is arrested after the discovery of a letter he had written to the German Minister of Transport Theodor Ganzenmuller implicating his involvement in the murder of some three hundred thousand Jews. After the trial he is sentenced to fifteen years imprisonment.

31 May 1962 international

Adolf Karl Eichmann is executed by the Israelis at Ramleh prison, Israel for his part in the mass murder of Jews during the Holocaust. He is cremated and his ashes are scattered in waters off the Mediterranean Sea.

1974 24 April 1974

Hans Biebow, the former commandant of the Lodz Ghetto is sentenced to death by a Polish court and hanged.

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