Significant Timeline of Events #2 - 1933 - August 1939

Timeline #2 - 1933 - Aug 1939 

 1933

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.

16 January 1933: Hitler publicly attacks Gregory Strasser for having been in communication with Chancellor Schleicher in relation to the offer of becoming Vice-Chancellor.

18 January 1933: Hitler along with Ernst Röhm, Heinrich Himmler agrees to meet von Papen again, but this time the meeting will take place within the home of the wine merchant Joachim von Ribbentrop. 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 President’s son, Otto Meissner, the State Secretary and von Papen. This time he was in the company of Göring and Frick, though Göring 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 out that he would accept a coalition cabinet, with him as Chancellor and with Wilhelm Frick as Minister of the Interior and Hermann Göring as Minister without Portfolio.

27 January 1933: The Reichsführer-SS, Heinrich Himmler instructs Heydrich to set up his counter-espionage headquarters in Berlin.  

28 January 1933: Chancellor von Schleicher informs his cabinet that he intends to ask President von Hindenburg to allow him to dissolve parliament and allow him to rule by decree. Hindenburg refuses Schleicher's request. As a result of Hindenburg's refusal, Schleicher resigns as German Chancellor. The German Chancellor Schleicher realising 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 appoints his government’s Foreign and Defence Ministers. Baron Konstantin von Neurath is to be Foreign Minister while General Werner von Blomberg is to be Defence Minister. Papen 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 Göring and Dr. Wilhelm Frick managed to persuade him to accept this and in return Hitler could give Frick the Reich Interior Ministry and Göring the Prussian Interior Ministry, if accepted, Göring 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.

30 January 1933:  Adolf Hitler is finally appointed Reich's Chancellor of Germany. As part of the agreement made with President von Hindenburg, Hitler would lead a coalition cabinet and as such would only have two NSDAP members within the cabinet with him and those fresh elections would be held.  Hermann Göring became a ‘Minister without a portfolio’ and at the same time, made ‘Interior Minister of Prussia’, whilst Wilhelm Frick was given the office of the ‘Reich Minister of the Interior’. The Conservative Franz von Papen became Germany's Vice-Chancellor.  There were many leading politicians and non-politicians alike, inside and outside Germany, who believed that Hitler would now be kept in check by his own cabinet, which was predominantly made up of non-NSDAP members, and this would eventually lead to his own downfall, and that of his party, as they believed that he would fail to create employment opportunities that the people were screaming out for. Some even saw him as von Papen's puppet. Even some Jewish owned newspapers and journals in Germany believed that Hitler had now been shackled.  However, there was a small group of voices that now saw a new war on the horizon. The new election would be held on 5th March 1933.

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 a virtual dictator of Germany refused the request.

February 1933: Joachim von Ribbentrop approaches von 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 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.

16 February 1933: Diarist Anne Frank, along with the rest of her family flees Germany.

17 February 1933: Hermann Göring 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 Göring orders them to support them when they need to do so.

22 February 1933: Some 50,000 SA and SS men are sworn in as police auxiliaries by Hermann Göring in Prussia, claiming that they were needed to keep order on the streets during the election, even though it was those SA men who were causing most of the disorder on the streets.

27 February 1933: The Reichstag is targeted by an arsonist.  An ex-Communist by the name of Marinus van der Lubbe is blamed for the fire, but many believed that the Nazis were really behind it. Göring claimed that the fire proved beyond doubt that the Communists were plotting to overthrow the legitimate government and install a Soviet style government in its place.  With this as the pretext, the German police and their new auxiliaries began to round up members of the KPD (Kommunistische Partei Deutschland: The Communist Party of Germany) and other known Communists.

28 February 1933: President von Hindenburg gives Hitler emergency powers which suspends civil rights and allows the State to apprehend and detain anyone deemed a serious threat to the stability of the state, where they would be placed within 'Protective Custody'. To hold such large numbers of prisoners, the Sturmabteilung (SA) sets up temporary holding centres by seizing unused factories and disused military barracks. Germany was now establishing its first prototype-conentraion camps which will be controlled and management by the SA. The first targets for persecution were political opponents of the Nazis, but it didn't take the SA long to target Jews as well, as many Jews were rounded up and shipped off to the Nazis newly improvised concentration camps.

February/March 1933: Hermann Göring is introduced to a recently new invention. It was a Swiss system which enabled the tapping and recording of telephone conversations on a large scale. As head of the Gestapo, Göring enthusiastically adopts the system to spy on rivals as well as enemies of the state.

05 March 1933: The last multi-party elections take place in Germany. Despite all the intimidations and threats towards opponents of the Nazis, the NSDAP, won 288 seats (43.9 percent of the vote), but still failed to win overall control of the Reichstag and had to rely on the Deutschnationale Volkspartei (German People's Party, DNVP) to gain a working majority in the parliament. The DNVP was an Alliance group comprising the 'German National People's Party' with 'Der Stahlhelm' and the 'Agricultural League', who together secured 52 seats. The Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland (The Social Democratic Party of Germany or the SPD) secured the second largest number of seats winning 120 (18.2 percent of the vote) with the Kommunistische Partei Deutschland (The Communist Party of Germany KPD) becoming the third largest party within the Reichstag, securing 81 seats (12.3 percent of the vote).   Due the Reichstag fire, future parliamentary sessions would be carried out within the ‘Krill Opera House’, just opposite the Reichstag building. But these sessions would be rare.

7 March 1933: Brown shirted SA men torch a synagogue in central Königsberg. Over the next few days, Jews and their property were attacked throughout Germany. Calls to boycott German goods abroad were being pushed as retaliation for what was happening to Jews in Germany.

09 March 1933:  Heinrich Himmler, the Reichsführer-SS, is made police president of Munich.  Himmler calls Reinhard Heydrich back to Munich as head of Political Department VI of the Munich Police. As head of the Munich political police department, Heydrich came into contact with Heinrich Müller, an energetic and skilful police officer who worked for the police’s political wing that dealt with the far-left [Communist] and rather than getting rid of him after he opposed Heydrich’s takeover of the political department of Munich’s police force, he recruited him, simply because of his expertise in dealing with communism, and simply because Heydrich needed actual police officers to  help him in his role as head of the political police, seeing that he, himself, had no experience of actual policing. - 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.

12 March 1933: Hitler manages to persuade President von Hindenburg to declare the Swastika the official emblem of Germany.

13 March 1933: Dr. Joseph Goebbels is made Reich Minister for Public Enlightenment and Propaganda. Goebbels now can use tools of the state to incite racial hatred in which he does with passion and enthusiasm.

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 the Leibstandarte SS Adolf Hitler by Josef (Sepp) Dietrich as a personal body guard unit for the Fuhrer. This body of men was soon expanded under Himmler and it also became known later as the Black Order.

21 March 1933: Himmler, now the Police President of Munich announces the opening of the first concentration camp in Germany. The Dachau concentration camp would be used to hold political prisoners. Communists are forbidden to take their seats in the new Reichstag and Special courts are established to examine and prosecute political enemies of the state. At this stage of Hitler’s hold on power, political adversaries were more of a threat to his regime than Jews or gays so the need to remove them from society was greatest.

22 March 1933: Dachau concentration camp is opened with SS-Standartenführer Hilmar Wäckerle becoming its first Commandant.

23 March 1933: Enabling Act (Law to Remove the Distress of People and State) is adopted. This Act provided Hitler with a constitutional foundation for his dictatorship. It by defacto, allowed the government to enact laws without the need to have them passed within the Reichstag first, or seek permission from Hindenburg as President. This was just another step in the direction that would lead to the eradication of the Weimar Republic.

26 March 1933: Hermann Göring invited leading German Jewish leaders to see him, and then demanded that they use their influences abroad to stop all the calls for a boycott on German goods.

27 March 1933: Thousands of American Jews descend on Madison Square Garden after a rally was called to protest against the government sanctioned pogroms against the Jews in Germany. Other rallies around the US also took place in support of the protest. Many Jews in Germany worried that they would be blamed for any and all foreign boycotts organised against Germany and therefore pleaded with their American counterparts not to organise such boycotts. Similar calls for boycotts against Germany occurred in the Britain.  These calls for boycotts helped convince the Nazis that they were right about the Jews being a worldwide power which needed to be smashed.

March 1933: First women’s concentration camp is opened at Gotteszell. Gotteszell was a women’s prison prior to it being used as a concentration camp.

01 April 1933: Himmler is appointed 'Political Police Commander' for the whole of Bavaria and is giving full responsibility for the country’s concentration camps. Jewish shops and businesses in Germany are boycotted for one day.  On this day anti-Jewish slogans were painted onto shop windows and SA members stood guard outside these businesses as a way to discourage Germans from going in. Thousands of Jews were assaulted and ridiculed as the day progressed, and others hide out of sight until the day was over.

04 April 1933: President von Hindenburg writes a letter to his Chancellor, Adolf Hitler, expressing deep concern that German war veterans are being removed from their posts simply because they are Jews and asked Hitler to find a way to allow them to remain in those posts.  If, he argued, they were willing to suffer for Germany, then Germany owes them a debt of gratitude. Reluctantly, Hitler promises to look into it. – Hitler agrees to make May Day a national holiday.

07 April 1933: ‘Law for the Restoration of a Professional Civil Service’ enacted which made it possible to expel Jews and other undesirables from the civil service, which included, judges, policemen, university professors and school teachers. Jews working for the arts and press, and even free professionals could now also be dismissed, and quotas on Jewish schoolchildren attending German schools was put in place. The only Jews who had the chance to stay within their fields of work, were those who had served in the German army during the last war, or those who had lost close family members in that war.  Jews were also being expelled from local and national sports associations and other leisure groups.  The Law also forbade Jews from entering the legal profession, but those Jews already practicing were left untouched.

20 April 1933: In an attempt to prepare the way for the future rulers of the National Socialist regime, Dr Bernhard Rust, Reich Minister for Science, Education and Culture sets up residential schools for children who show promise of being good potential leaders.

21 April 1933: Rudolf Hess is named Deputy Fuhrer for Party Affairs. In Germany, Jewish ritual slaughter is banned.

22 April 1933: Jewish doctors and dentists are banned from working within the state sponsored sector.

25 April 1933: The 'Law against Overcrowding in Schools and Universities,' puts limits (a numbers clause) on the number of Jewish students being allowed to attend public schools. Their numbers were not to exceed 1.5 percent of the number of total Aryans enrolled within each school or university. Joseph Goebbels returns to his home town of Rheydt where he receives the freedom of the city.

27 April 1933: The Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo, or secret state police) is established in Prussia by Hermann Goering.

May 1933:  Joachim von Ribbentrop is given the rank of SS-Standartenführer [Colonel] from Himmler.

01 May 1933: The Nazis granted the trade unions what they had been asking for, that there be a May Day holiday.

02 May 1933: Hitler’s government bans trade unions in Germany and replaces it with a Nazi-orientated Labour movement. The Nazis begin to arrest leading trade unionists.

05 May 1933: The Treaty of Berlin (friendship treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union), which was renewed on 24^th June 1931 is ratified by Hitler’s government.

10 May 1933: The Nazis organise a burning of books by authors that they object to throughout Germany. Books written by Jews and other so-called undesirables are thrown onto a bonfire by Nazi students and members of the Hitler Jugend (Hitler Youth).  In New York, and other American cities, an estimated 100,000 people march against the Nazis continued persecution of the Jews.

14 May 1933: Joseph Goebbels wife Magda broadcast the nation’s first Mother’s Day address.

June 1933: In Prussia, Hermann Göring appoints Heinrich Himmler ministerial commissioner for auxiliary police in the Gestapo office.

21 June 1933: The Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschland (The Social Democratic Party of Germany: SDP) is proscribed. Other parties either merge with the NSDAP or voluntarily dissolve. 

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. SS-Gruppenführer Theodor Eicke takes over as Commandant at Dachau Concentration Camp and is ordered by Himmler to establish a disciplinary code for guards and for prisoners.  

27 June 1933: In London 50,000 Jews rally in Hyde Park against Nazi persecutions taking place within Germany.

05 July 1933: Because of Nazi pressure, The German Centre Party dissolves itself. Hitler announces an end to the ‘national revolution’.

07 July 1933: The deputy Führer, Rudolf Hess, in an attempt to protect the German economy, and to check uncontrolled SA behaviour, prohibits attacks on Jewish owned department stores. 

14 July 1933: The NSDAP is declared to be the only legal party in Germany.  A new law was completed which was aimed at stripping away German citizenship from all Jews who had entered the country after November 1918, however, Hitler decided that this law should only focus on those Jews who came from the East (Ostjuden). 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. Germany officially becomes a one-party state after Hitler’s government introduces ‘The Law Against the New Formation of Parties.’ Hitler’s government also introduces a ‘Denaturalisation Act’ which gives them the power to revoke citizenship from anyone they deem unworthy of citizenship if they had been ‘naturalised between 1918 and Hitler coming to power in 1933. Jews would become the primary target of this new law. 

20 July 1933: A Concordat (pact or agreement) 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 not persecute the Church and its members. Part of this agreement obliged German Church leaders swear an oath of loyalty to the German President.

August 1933: Walter Schultze, a Bavarian health minister, argued that some of the country's mentally ill patients be ejected from the German community, and be forced to do slave labour tasks within the concentration camps.

02 August 1933: Hermann Göring and Wilhelm Frick disband the SA auxiliary police force.

20 August 1933: The American Jewish Congress declare a boycott against Nazi Germany.

25 August 1933: Haavara Agreement is signed between the Nazis and some leading German Zionist Jews. This agreement would allow tens of thousands of German Jews to emigrate to Palestine but they would have to leave their properties to the German state alongside before embarking for Palestine.  They would allow some of their wealth to be transferred to Palestine under German export rules. 

30 November 1933: Goring establishes autonomy of the Gestapo in Prussia and brings it under his control as Prime Minister of Prussia.

02 September 1933: Italy and Germany sign a pact of friendship.

10 September 1933: The Concordat that Hitler had made with the Vatican is ratified.

13 September 1933: In German schools, the Nazis introduce Race Theory into the curriculum

20 September 1933: Rudolf Höss joins the ranks of the SS as a Anwärter (Cadet).

21-22 September 1933: The Reichstag Fire trial begins.  The Dutch Communist Marinus van der Lubbe, Ernst Torgler, who was the last chairman of the German Communist Party [KPD], along with three Bulgarian Communists:  Georgi Dimitrov, Blagoi Popov and Vassili Tanev stood were accused of the arson attack.  Torgler and the three Bulgarians were acquitted but Torgler re-arrested straight away and placed within ‘Protective Custody’ within a concentration camp until 1935 when he was released as part of an amnesty. Torgler would end up working for the Nazis during the war on behalf of Goebbels propaganda ministry against Stalin’s Soviet Union. Marinus van der Lubbe was convicted and sentenced to death.

22 September 1933: Reich Chamber of Culture is established under the direction of Joseph Goebbels and all cultural organisations were expected to join it. Through this organisation, new laws were requested which would allow (Dr) Goebbels the authority to expel Jews from all cultural organisations such as radio, theatres and the German film industry. 

24 September 1933: Joseph Goebbels and the Foreign Minister Neurath leave for Geneva to represent Germany at the League of Nations.

29 September 1933: German Jews are banned from owning land and from participating in all public activities.

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.

12 November 1933: in Germany, a referendum is held asking the German people if they supported their government’s decision to withdraw from the League of Nations – Over 40 million agreed with some 2 million said ‘no.’ Reichstag elections are also held, but by now the only legal party in existence in Germany was the Nazi Party. The people were allowed to vote for party members and guests of the party on a selected list of candidates. Turnout reached some 95 percent were some 39.5 million people voted for the Nazis out of 45.1 million, thus officially giving them 661 seats in the Reichstag out of 661 seats.

24 November 1933: The 'Law Against Dangerous Habitual Criminals' is adopted in Germany, if an offender has two previous convictions against their name, the court will be expected to order an indefinite period of custody, usually within a concentration camp.  It was believed that criminal behaviour was inherent in the genes and that therefore an individual whom had this genetic trait was expected to commit further crimes. The law also opened the door for the castration if sex offenders.

30 November 1933: Göring establishes autonomy of the Geheime Staatspolizei (Gestapo) in Prussia and brings it under his control as Prime Minister.

December 1933: Hermann Göring 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 Röhm and Rudolf Hess to his cabinet as ministers without portfolios.

05 December 1933: A decree is passed which forces doctors to inform on their patients who had hereditary diseases or chronic alcoholism.

 

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 Röhm.

03 January 1934: Joseph Mengele quits the Freikorp and joins the Sturmabteilung (SA).

10 January 1934: Marinus van der Lubbe, the Communist accused of setting the Reichstag on fire is guillotined in Leipzig prison.

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 ends local government assemblies, transferring all sovereign rights to the Reich government.

01 February 1934: Without Hitler’s knowledge or approval, Ernst Röhm sends the defence minister a Cabinet memorandum demanding that the defence of the country should be handed 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. Rudolf Höss is given a quick promotion to the rank of SS-Sturmmann (senior private).

24 April 1934: The People’s Court is established in Berlin to try all cases of treason.

May 1934: The ‘Barmen Declaration’ is signed by leading Protestant clergy, namely, Martin Niemöller and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, with the leading Lutheran theologian Karl Barth. The declaration attacks the Nazi manipulation of the church in Germany.

June 1934: Himmler and Göring gather evidence of an alleged plot by Ernst Röhm and his SA against Hitler’s regime. Röhm according to the evidence, stated that he would merge the army, SS and the SA under a single command to be held by Röhm himself. Hitler would remain Chancellor. However, the evidence used against Röhm was all faked.

14-15 June 1934: Hitler meets Mussolini in Venice.

17 June 1934: Franz von Papen, Vice-Chancellor and Hitler’s non-Nazi collation partner within his made a speech at the University of Marburg criticising the Nazis excessive use of violence on the streets of Germany which infuriated Hitler.

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.

27 June 1934: Reinhard Heydrich at a meeting in Berlin tells his SS and SD commanders that Ernst Röhm and his SA were planning a coup against Hitler and his government and as SS and SD men, they would have to be ready to prevent it.

June 1934: Hitler, who is now believing that the SA maybe planning a coup, telephones Ernst Röhm’s adjutant and orders that all SA Obergruppenführers and Gruppenführers 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; it would be easier to arrest them all or liquidate 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 and comrade Ernst Röhm, with pistol in his hand Hitler enters Röhm’s room at 6.30am. Hitler screams at Röhm accusing him of being a traitor and that he was under arrest. Those arrested 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 Göring who had Gregor Strasser arrested and shot along with several hundred SA men alongside with their leader Röhm. The men behind the killing were Himmler’s SS. This established a new beginning for the SS and soon they would not be under the authority of the SA and their future development would be written in blood. As a reward for his role in the liquidation of the alleged SA threat, Reinhard Heydrich was promoted to SS-Gruppenführer by Himmler.

01 July 1934: Hitler calls an end to the slaughter that had started on the 29-30^th 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 himself.

25 July 1934: The Austrian Nazi’s attempt a coup in Vienna in which the Austrian Chancellor Dollfuss is assassinated and he is replaced with Kurt von Schuschnigg. 

27 July 1934: Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmler leases the ruined castle of Wewelsburg with the aim of making it the seat of his Black Order, the SS.

02 August 1934: The aged German President von Hindenburg dies leaving Hitler to snatch the Presidency for himself. All members of the armed forces were now obliged to take a personal oath of allegiance to Adolf Hitler. The oath had been formulated by the defence minister Werner Eduard Fritz von Blomberg and General Walther von 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 and Chancellor of Germany as well as making himself head of the German Armed Forces, though he is slightly disappointed at the referendum result where he asked 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, Hitler obviously wanted 100 percent approval.

18 September 1934: The Soviet Union joins the League of Nations.

October 1934: Joseph Mengele quits the Sturmabteilung (SA) claiming health problems.

01 October 1934: A general strike is held in Spain, which escalates into rebellion in the cities of Madrid, Catalonia and Asturias.

End of October 1934: The Gestapo in Berlin sets up a special branch to fight homosexuality.

01 December 1934: Rudolf Höss is posted to Dachau concentration camp with the rank of SS-Rottenführer (Corporal).

07 December 1934: Hitler appoints Hermann Göring his deputy and his successor.

19 December 1934: Japan renounces its 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 Jan 1935: The administration of Justice is brought together across Germany thus bringing these Ministries under Central control. – Wilhelm Canaris is appointed as head of the counter-espionage unit within the German armed forces, the Abwehr.

13 January 1935: The Saar votes overwhelmingly to return to the Reich, with a stunning 90.7 percent of the vote (477,089 votes) in favour compared to just 8.8 percent who opted for the status que (46,613 votes). Less than 1 percent wanted unification with France (2,124 votes)

26 February 1935: A law for the introduction of a ‘Arbeitsbuch’ (Work Book or Employment Record Book) is passed in Germany. This book is used as a personal employment record for all workers. Without it an individual could not get access to paid work.  The purpose behind the book was to control were workers, especially professional workers could go and work, thus spreading the workforce where it is needed within the economy.  However, the major problem for workers was that a current employer could stop an individual moving to a rival company as the employer could simply hold onto their document, thus denying them access to better paid employment.  The labour Office kept a central ‘Registry of Work Books’, and anyone caught entering false information in the books were subject to punishment. 

01 March 1935: The Saar is reintegrated back into the German Reich.

11 March 1935: The existence of the Luftwaffe is made public.

16 March 1935: Hitler openly rejects the Versailles Treaty by announcing that Germany is to rearm and that military conscription is to be reintroduced.

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.

01 April 1935:  The use of the Arbeitsbuch (Work Book or Employment Record Book) comes into force.  Jehovah Witnesses are banned in Germany. Jehovah Witnesses refused to swear the oath of allegiance to the state, they also refused to give the nazi salute and they also refused to be drafted into the armed forces. Whilst still working in Dachau, Rudolf Höss is promoted to SS-Scharführer (Sergeant).

10 April 1935: Hermann Göring marries Emmy Sonnemann.

11-14 April 1935: Britain, France and Italy meet to discuss ways to counter Hitler’s militant Germany (Stresa Conference)

20 April 1936: Hitler promotes Hermann Göring to Colonel-General, not what Göring 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.

01 May 1935: Jews are forbidden to serve in the German armed forces.

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.

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. The ultimatum demanded that Britain allow Germany a navy of 35 per cent of the size of Britain’s own navy, otherwise the Germans would withdraw from the conference. Britain agrees 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-Brigadeführer (Brigadier-General).

18 June 1935: Britain signs a Naval Agreement with Nazi Germany which will allow the expansion of the German Navy.

20 June 1935: Heinrich Himmler expands Germany's concentration camp system.

28 June 1935: The Nazis introduce Paragraphs 175 and 175a which allows the state to prosecute men engaged in homosexual activity.

July 1936: General Francisco Franco, Commander-in-Chief of the army in Spanish Morocco rebels against the elected government and prepares to return to 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 and Hitler for support. Hitler allows Göring’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 in Spain. Mussolini would also eventually assist Franco by supplying him with volunteers and arms.

20 August 1935: At the Seventh World Congress of Communist International calls for an anti-Fascist front to be set up to combat the increasing threat from fascism.

25 August 1935: Pastor Martin Niemöller, tells his parishioners that the history of Judaism is "dark and sinister" and that all Jews are "under a curse" because they had killed Jesus crucified.

31 August 1935: In America, President Roosevelt signs the Neutrality Act.

15 Sept 1935: New anti-Jewish laws (Nuremberg Laws) enforced within Germany, which prevents Jews from having sexual relations with Germans or people with similar blood. These new laws also removed Jewish legal equality and prohibiting "mixed" marriages.

28 September 1935: Hitler’s government imposes control over all German Protestant Churches.

03 October 1935: Italy invades Ethiopia (Abyssinia)

10 October 1935: The league of Nations imposes sanctions on Italy for its invasion of Ethiopia (Abyssinia).

14 October 1935: The Reich Minister of the Interior, Wilhelm Frick, indicates that more restrictions would be imposed on Jews concerning their role within Germany's trade industry.  

18 October 1935: Hitler gives Heinrich Himmler extra police powers. The main target of these powers is the Jewish communities.

19 October 1935: The League of Nations vote to impose partial sanctions against Italy after her invasion of Ethiopia.

20 October 1935: Hans Serelman, a Jewish doctor is imprisoned in a concentration camp for donating blood earmarked for a non-Jew, in an effort to save their life. 

01 November 1935: German Jews have their citizenship removed.

06 November 1935: Himmler informs the Ministry of Justice of a Hitler order which prevents them giving people who are held in 'protective custody' access to lawyers.

14 November 1935: German Jews are denied voting rights, and are no longer allowed to hold public office. And official definitions of who can be declared a Jew is set up. 'Full-Jews' are those who's have two Jewish parents, as well as having Jewish grandparents, and that they are active members of the Jewish community. 'Half-Jews' are to be labelled 'Mischlinge' i.e., they have one parent who is fully Jewish and the other a Christian.

15 November 1935: Churches throughout Germany allow the Nazis to comb through their records which allows them to identify those who are Christian and those who are Jews.

23 December 1935: The Italians use mustard gas against the Ethiopians.

31 December 1935: The remaining Jewish civil servants are dismissed from their government posts throughout Germany.

 

1936

04 February 1936: Wilhelm Gustloff (1895 –1936), a German citizen employed by the Swiss government as a meteorologist and a Nazi Party member who built up a Swiss branch of the NSDAP for Germans living in Switzerland is assassinated by David Frankfurter, a Jewish medical student from Croatia. Frankfurter was sentenced to 18 years imprisonment but was released in 1945.

06-16 February 1936: The Winter Olympics are held in the town of Garmisch-Partenkirchen in Bavaria, Germany. Norway led the table winning a total of 15 medals (7 gold) with Germany winning 6 medals (3 gold).

10 Feb 1936: A Law in Prussia makes the Gestapo no longer answerable to the courts and in the event of wrongful arrest, no-one could sue for damages. The Gestapo are now above the law.

16 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.

01 March 1936: Rudolf Höss is promoted again, to Hauptscharführer (Sergeant Major) whilst serving at Dachau.

07 March 1936: Hitler orders the Wehrmacht to reoccupy the demilitarised Rhineland. Under the Versailles treaty, Germany had been prohibited to have any military formations anywhere within the Rhineland area. Britain and France take no action against this breach of the treaty. 

15 March 1936: In New York, a massive anti-Nazi rally is held.

April 1936: Rudolf Höss is made Rapportführer.

01 April 1936: All concentration camps and its guards are now funded from the federal budget.

05 May 1936: In France, Blum’s Populaire Francais is elected to form the next government.

09 May 1936: Italy officially annexes Abyssinia.

17 June 1936: Himmler is made Chief of the German Police, and therefore became head of the newly nationalised Gestapo, Kripo and regular uniformed police.

08 July 1936: The Spanish Civil War begins.

01-16 August 1936: The Summer Olympics are held in Berlin. Hitler wanted to use these Olympics to prove the supremacy of the Aryan race, however the black American athlete Jesse Owens dented his wishes by winning four gold medals (in the sprint and long jump events), making him the most successful athlete of the Berlin Olympics. Germany won 89 medals, securing 33 gold, placing it top of the table, with the USA coming in second with a total of 56 medals, of which 24 were gold. Hitler also wanted to show the world a friendly face of Germany under National Socialism therefore ordered a temporary halt to pogroms against the Jews and that all anti-Jewish sentiments on public display be removed from sight.

September 1936: Rudolf Höss is promoted to lieutenant and is transferred to Sachsenhausen concentration camp.

13 September 1936: Heinrich Himmler establishes an SS society known simply as the Lebensborn (The Fountain of Life) as a way to encourage SS members to have more children.  During the war, children were removed from non-German families within the occupied areas that looked Aryan, and placed with SS couples to be raised as German. Rudolf Höss is promoted to the rank of SS-Untersturmführer (Second Lieutenant) whilst still serving at Dachau concentration camp and was placed in charge of the administration of stores and prisoner property.

20 September 1936: The entire German police system that had operated as individual state organs are brought together under one central control, which is based in Berlin under Himmler.

09 October 1936: The Association of Jewish war veterans in Germany are banned.

18 October 1936: Hitler issues a decree which puts Hermann Goering in charge of Germany's Four-Year Plan.  This plan was to grow Germany's economy and to ensure its military arms are ready for war within four years.  It also acknowledged that Germany's economy was not self-sufficient and to maintain Germany economically, therefore Lebensraum (living space) would be required, and to achieve this aim, Germany would eventually have to annex its neighbours’ countries, especially the eastern states. Germany would then secure living space and take control of their natural resources.

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 Führer is deeply religious. Faulhaber writes a report later stating that ‘He recognises Christianity as a builder of Western culture.’

10 November 1936: In Sachsenhausen concentration camp, an SS guard snatched the cap off the head of one of the prisoners (Gustav Lampe, a Communist prisoner who had been a Reichstag member) and threw it over a sentry's fence and then ordered him to retrieve it, when he did, he was shot dead for attempting to escape. This type of German behaviour was treated as a game by the guards, which was replicated in other camps.

15 November 1936: Joseph Goebbels writes in his diary that the showdown with Bolshevism is near and that Hitler had win over Germany's military leaders in relation to his future plans.  

25 November 1936: Germany and Japan sign the Anti-Comintern Pact

01 December 1936: Membership of a Nazi youth group becomes compulsory for all children over the age of six- years, all other youth groups are either disbanded or absorbed into a pro-Nazi youth group. 

 

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 within 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 France’s defence budget to match German military spending.

04 February 1937: The German ambassador in London von Ribbentrop creates controversy by giving 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 carrying a pastoral letter from the Pope that was to be read to the church’s 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 the country.

28 May 1937: Neville Chamberlain becomes the British prime minister.

04 June 1937: An American Jew, Helmut Hirsch, is executed by guillotine in Germany after being found with a revolver and a suitcase containing bombs which he had planned to use to assassinate the 'baiter of Jews' Julius Streicher.  William Dodd, the US Ambassador tried to have his sentence commuted to imprisonment.

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 declares that 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 in relation to the Spanish Civil War.

July 1937: Hermann Göring 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 Göring (the Hermann Göring Reich Works for Ore Mining and Iron Smelting). Göring had tried unsuccessfully to get Germany’s steel magnets to build and operate a steelwork by using Germany’s low-grade ore, he was hoping that this would help end Germany’s reliance on overseas markets. But the businessmen believed it to be far too costly an adventure and declined Göring invitation.

15 July 1937: Hermann Göring signs a contract with the H.G. Brassert Company of Chicago to design and build furnaces that can handle low-grade ore. The Buchenwald concentration camp is opened. Its first commandant is Karl-Otto Koch.

19 July 1937: The Nazis open their ‘Degenerate Art’ exhibition 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.

07 September 1937: Germany imposes a 25 percent tax on Jewish assets held within the country.

13 September 1937: In Germany, a number of Jews are arrested and held in ‘Protective Custody’ and are told that if they leave Germany for good, they will be freed from prison.

21 October 1937: Heinrich Himmler declares that any returning Jewish emigrant will be arrested and placed within a concentration camp.

05 November 1937: Hitler meets with his General Staff. They believed the meeting was to sort out raw material issues that have been simmering away for months, however, Hitler informs them of his 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.

08 November 1937: 'The Eternal Jew' exhibition is opened in Nuremberg which is aimed at convincing Germans that the Jews are co-conspirators with Bolshevism.  

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 Göring tries to repair the rift when Halifax visits him at his Carinhall residence.

26 November 1937: In Germany, Hjalmar Schacht, Minister for Economics resigns from his office, however he remained in Hitler's cabinet as a ‘Minister without a Portfolio.’ General von Blomberg, Hitler’s Minister for Defence, marries Erna Gruhn. Hitler and Hermann Göring 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 in the past for posing for pornographic pictures. The policeman passes this information on to Count von Helldorf, the Berlin Police Chief who subsequently arranges a meeting between Blomberg and himself to discuss the matter.

11 December 1937: Italy leaves the League of Nations.

 

1938

1938: Staff Reichsführer-SS Heinrich Himmer 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 vast concentration camp system.

03 January 1938: The British government announces that all school children are to be issued with gas masks.

04 January 1938: The Romanian government bans all Jews from employing women under the age of 40.

27 January 1938: Hitler accepts the resignation of his defence minister Field-Marshal Blomberg.

01 February 1938: Italian troops adopt the German-style goosestep.

05 February 1938: Hitler's cabinet meets for the last time, Hitler no longer felt the need of his cabinet to help him rule, he simply ruled off the cuff.

10 February 1938: King Carol II of Romania ousts his Premier Octavian Goga and becomes dictator and begins a political and legal campaign against the far-right group, ‘The Iron Guard’.

12 February 1938: In Austria, the Nazis there are beginning to agitate again in favour of a union with Germany, with this as a pretext, Hitler summons the Austrian prime minister, Kurt Schuschnigg to Berchtesgaden where Hitler began to impose heavy demands of the Austrian Prime Minister.  Schuschnigg was told by Hitler to lift the ban that was on the Austrian NSDAP and appoint Arthur Seyss-Inquart, the party's leader, as Minister if Interior and prepare the way for Austria to be governed by Germany.  Once Schuschnigg returned home, he decided to hold a referendum on whether the people supported Hitler's wish for ‘Anschluss’ [Connection] or to keep Austria independent as a way the circumvent Hitler's demands. Austria and Hungary recognise Franco’s provisional government.

14 February 1938: Germany pressurises Austria to release all Nazi members held in their jails and to appoint pro-Nazi 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 Niemöller is arrested in Germany and sent to Sachsenhausen Concentration camp.

09 March 1938: The Austrian prime minister announces that Austria would go to the polls in a plebiscite asking whether or not the people supported Anschluss or independence.  On hearing this, Hitler flew into a rage and ordered his generals to prepare for war against Austria and at the same time he informed Schuschnigg that he will invade Austria if he did not reverse his policy of a referendum and step down as Prime Minister.

11 March 1938: The Austrian Nazis take to the streets and force the country's Prime Minister to resign. Arthur Seyss-Inquart takes over the government and calls on Germany's assistance to help stabilise the country by inviting in the German army. With the Nazis in power in Austria, the country's Jews automatically witness pogroms springing up over the country. Austrian Jews would be forced to physically scrub the streets clean and watch as the rampaging Nazis steal their vehicles alongside their other worldly possessions and vandalised their properties.  Jewish businesses became an easy target for the mobs. While all this was going on, the police refused to intervene whilst the populace looked on with either blind indifference or glee. 

13 March 1938: A Reunification Act is decreed in Vienna, which recognises the Anschluss with Germany. Hitler is met with huge cheering crowds of supporters as visits his hometown of Linz in Austria.  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 is revoked.

24 March 1938: Hermann Göring visits Austria.

26 March 1938:  Hermann Göring 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: A referendum is held in Austria to confirm Austrian support for the Anschluss. Turnout was high (99 percent) with 4,453,912 voting in favour whilst only 11,929 voting 'No' (under half a percent).

April/May 1938: Flossenbürg concentration camp is set up.

16 April 1938: An Anglo-Italian pact is signed in Rome.

18 April 1938: King Carol II of Romania orders the arrest of some 2,000 Nazis for plotting a coup.

26-27 April 1938: Hermann Göring 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 is signed, with a promise to defend Czechoslovakia from foreign aggression.

03 May 1938: Hitler, along with Goebbels and Ribbentrop meet Mussolini in Rome whilst Hermann Göring 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 win 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 his birthplace, Braunau, 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 its first test flight. The JU-88 would become the most successful German bomber of the next war. - Reinhard Heydrich writes to various Kripo branches [criminal police] and orders them to arrest some 200 asocials [work-shy, gypsies etc] and place them within the concentration camps as ‘protective custody’ inmates.  Before the year was over, there would be thousands of alleged ‘asocial elements’ incarcerated.

02 June 1938: Hermann Göring’s wife Emmy gives birth to a baby girl whom they name Edda after Mussolini’s daughter.

03 June 1938: The Nazis in Germany create a new law which allows the authorities to confiscate what they regard as degenerate art.

06 June 1938: Sigmund Freud, the renowned Austrian psychiatrist, along with his family, reaches Britain as a refugee after fleeing Nazi persecution.

09 June 1938: The synagogue in Munich is set ablaze by local Nazis and some 2,000 Jews throughout the Reich are arrested.

12 June 1938: The Sudeten German Party in Czechoslovakia makes substantial gains in the national election.

14 June 1938: In Germany, 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.

25 June 1938: Jewish doctors are forbidden to treat non-Jews.

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.

06 July 1938: Laws are enacted to make it easier to divorce within the Reich. The purpose of these laws was to enable the non-Jews within the marriage to be able to leave their Jewish partners much more quickly and easily.

01 July 1938: Germany accepts the responsibility for Austria’s debts.

06 - 16 July 1938: An international conference at Evian, France, is held to discuss how to deal with the Jewish refugees fleeing Germany.

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 Hermann Göring to pay an official visit to the Reich. Göring uses the visit to show off Germany’s new and powerful air force.

01 August 1938: Rudolf Höss is transferred to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp as its adjutant.

03 August 1938: Mussolini’s government bans all foreign Jews from attending Italian higher education institutions.

10 August 1938: Local Nazis in Nuremberg set fire to a local synagogue.

17 August 1938: Jews throughout the Reich are ordered to adopt the names Israel (for men) and Sarah (for women), and this is to be completed by New Year’s Day, 1939. Austria’s former leaders, including their ex-Chancellor Schuschnigg are imprisoned within Dachau concentration camp.

20 August 1938: Adolf Eichmann opens up a Jewish Emigration office in Vienna, Austria, as part of the SD’s policy of removing the Jewish element from Austrian society by means of emigration.

26 August 1938: A Jewish Emigration office opens in Vienna in an attempt to encourage the country’s Jews to emigrate.

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 tensions grow 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.

08 September 1938: The 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: After huge pressure from the West, 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: In Munich, Britain and France agreed to hand over the Sudetenland over to Germany (Munich Agreement) in an effort to de-escalate tensions between Germany and Czechoslovakia.  Mussolini acted as a broker between the parties concerned, except of course Czechoslovakia itself, which had no input in the talks. 

01 October 1938: German troops march into the Sudetenland, closely following behind the German troops, 2 units of Einsatzgruppen [special task forces] went around arresting those Czechs deemed a threat to the new order of things, especially political opponents.

03 October 1938: The First Lord of the Admiralty, Duff Cooper resigns over Chamberlain’s appeasement of Hitler during the Czech crises.

05 October 1938: German Jews are ordered to hand in their passports as Wilhelm Frick, Germany's Reich Minister of the Interior nullifies them, and orders the Jews to attain new ones, which will have "J" (Jude) stamped onto them. Hitler visits the Sudetenland. The President of Czechoslovakia, Benes resigns from office.

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 and charged with plotting to overthrow the government.

18 October 1938:  Some 15,000 Polish heritage Jews are forced to leave their homes throughout Germany, and go with only a single suitcase to the nearest railway station. From there they are transferred to the German-Polish border, where they are forced over the border at gunpoint.

28 October 1938: The Nazi authorities round-up a further 17,000 Polish-born Jews from Germany. The Polish state had now anticipated this and had already stripped this Jews of their Polish citizenship, thus making them ‘stateless’, however, this did not stop the Germans from forcing them over the border and into Poland at gunpoint.

02 November 1938: Following arbitration by Hitler, Hungary annexes the southern parts of Slovakia and Ruthenia.

07 November 1938: Herschel Grynszpan, a young Polish Jew, assassinates Ernst Vom Rath, a German diplomat serving in Paris. Herschel was born in Hannover in 1921, the son of Polish-Russian parents who had fled Hitler’s tyranny. He had made plans to go to Palestine but ended up in France. Germany reaps its vengeance on its Jewish population a couple of days later in retaliation for the murder of Vom Rath.

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 Nov 1938: Kristallnacht (Crystal Nigh – Night of Broken Glass) Pogrom begins - The violence that ensues is dubbed ‘Kristallnacht’ (Night of Broken Glass) as glass littered the streets after SA men smashed up Jewish shops, synagogues and homes. Some Jews lost their lives whilst others are arrested and placed in Dachau concentration camp as retaliation for the murder of Vom Rath by a Jew 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: Hermann Göring holds a meeting with leading members of Hitler's regime, including Goebbels, Heydrich, Daluege and Funk, to discuss the mismanagement of the recent pogrom against the Jews (Crystal Night) within the newly built Air Ministry building in Berlin. Göring is extremely angry at the way the pogrom had hurt Germany economically and to discuss ways to ensure that the Jews did not benefit from their insurance policies in relation to the damage done to their stores and homes.  It was also decided that the Jewish population should be forced to pay reparations for the damage caused by the Nazi mob, this would be seen as some kind of 'atonement tax' which was set at one billion marks. At this meeting, Heydrich suggested that Jews should have their driving licenses confiscated along with any vehicles that they may own, and they should only be allowed to be treated by Jewish doctors as well as other prohibitions. From here on in, Göring was now the man who set the tone when it came to the Jewish question, with Heydrich taking instructions from Göring.  Soon, Jews would be completely removed from the economic life within the Reich, and be prohibited from attending entertainment venues, Jewish newspapers would also be closed down except one, which the German authorities would use to inform the Jewish population of new restrictions and to encourage emigration, and the remaining Jewish students either within schools or universities would be expelled.  Heydrich also called for the Jews to be forced to wear a mark to identify them as Jews, however, this Idea temporarily fell by the wayside. Hermann Göring 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: All Jewish schoolchildren are banned from attending German schools. In Washington, President Roosevelt condemns the Nazi pogroms against the Jews.

16 November 1938: After protesting against Nazi violence against the Jews which took place throughout Germany (Kristallnacht), Pastor von Jan is assaulted by a Nazi mob and then imprisoned for his protest. 

21 November 1938: In response to the pogrom of 9 November (Crystal Night), Lionel Du Rothschild and Chaim Weizmann, with the support of some prominent local British Jews meet with the British Prime Minister in an attempt to allow unaccompanied Jewish child refugees into the UK from Germany and Austria.

23 November 1938: The Nazis place a 20% tax on Jewish property worth over 5,000 marks.

01 December 1938: The first trainload of Jewish child refugees leaves Berlin for the UK.  This is the beginning of what will become known as the ‘Kindertransport’.  Many of these children would never see their parents alive again. 

03 December 1938: A German government decree is issued which allows for all Jewish businesses to Aryanised.  Thousands of Jewish businesses would be sold for next to nothing over the next few years.  Jewish capital, held in special Nazi authorized accounts had restrictions placed on them so that the account holders found it difficult to access their own money. 

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.

14 December 1938: The UK government agree to allow more child refugees, some 10,000, who were fleeing persecution in Germany entry into Britain so long as refugee organisations provided guarantees that they would provide for them.

24 December 1938: Pope Pius XI condemns Italian anti-Semitism.

 

1939

01 January 1939: In Germany Jews are no longer allowed to run either retail shops, workshops or wholesale establishments. In Germany, all women under 25 years old are told by the government that they will have to do at least one year’s 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.

24 January 1939: The Reich Central Office for Jewish Emigration (Reichszentrale für Jüdische Auswanderung) is set up in Berlin for the sole purpose of encouraging and facilitating Jewish emigration.

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

30 January 1939: Hitler makes it clear in a speech in the Reichstag that he will blame the Jews if Europe is plunged into another world war and he goes on to warn them that he will go out of his way to annihilate them once and for all.

31 January 1939: Reinhard Heydrich offers most Jews who are currently held within the concentration camp system early release if they make a pledge that they will leave the Reich [emigrate] as soon as soon as they get their affairs in order.  

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.

21 February 1939: The German authorities issue a decree ordering the Jewish population to sell their Jewellery and other precious metals to the state for next to nothing. The only pieces of Jewellery exempt were wedding rings.

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.

02 March 1939: Cardinal Eugenio Pacelli is elected to be the next Pope by the College of Cardinals. He takes the title Pius XII.

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: After the Nazi government encouraged the Slovaks to declare independence from what was left of Czechoslovakia, the Slovaks declare their independence and then turned to Germany for assistance in maintaining their independence.  Hitler summons the Czech President, Emil Hácha to Berlin where Hitler, alongside Göring bullied and threatened him until he accepted the German army being send into his country to help restore order. 

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. Like what happened with the occupation of the Sudetenland, two Einsatzgruppen units followed the German army into the rump that was Czechoslovakia to systematically round up all potential enemies and incarcerate them within Germany’s ever expanding concentration camp system.   

16 March 1939: After the German forces occupies Prague, Hitler, also in Prague, declares that Bohemia and Moravia a Protectorate of Germany and appoints Konstantin von Neurath as Reich Protector.  Emil Hácha remains in office as Hitler's puppet, but without any real authority. Britain and France finally realise now that Hitler cannot be trusted to keep to international treaties and agreements and finally acknowledge that force will have to be used to stop his expansionist policies.  But for Czechoslovakia, they do nothing else but make verbal complaints. From now on, Czech Jews are now for persecution, as well as the Jews of Slovakia, in the newly created independent state, which aligned itself closely with Nazi Germany.

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 falls on deaf ears. Hitler entered the city at 2.30pm.

25 March 1939: A decree is issued that made it compulsory for all German children from the ages of 10 upwards to enrol within the Hitler Jugend [Hitler Youth].

28 March 1939: The Spanish civil war ends.

31 March 1939: Britain and France guarantee Poland's independence, specially form an aggressive Germany.

07 April 1939: Italy invades Albania.

20 April 1939: Hitler appoints Leonardo Conti as Reich Health Leader.

26 April 1939: Britain introduces conscription.

28 April 1939: As tensions between Germany and the West become even more strained over questions concerning Germany's demands over Danzig and the Polish Corridor. Hitler informs the Reichstag that he is ending the Anglo-German Naval Agreement and at the same time, renounces his non-aggression pact Germany had made with Poland. 

30 April 1939: In New York, Adolf Hitler’s nephew William Hitler, calls his uncle a menace. The German authorities revoke tenancy rights for Jews. Jewish homeowners could also be forced to rent part of their homes to other Jews. 

31 March 1939: The British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain, finally accepts that only force would stop Hitler from annexing other countries and 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 Göring 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 other countries either in Europe or Africa.

16 April 1939:  Hermann Göring 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 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 informs them that he plans to attack Poland at the first opportunity stating that Danzig may give him the perfect excuse to invade. At this point Hitler still believes that Britain and France are cowardly nations and therefore would not intervene.

24 June 939: The Brazilian President, Getúlio Dornelles Vargas allows 3,000 German Jews entry into Brazil.

28 June 1939: Hitler officially rips up his Naval Treaty he signed with Britain.

02 July 1939: The King of Britain approves the formation of a Women’s Auxiliary Air Force.

03 July 1939: Hermann Göring 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 Göring 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. German Jews are banned from holding any government posts.

06 July 1939: In Berlin, all Reich Jews are ordered to join the new ‘Union of Jews’

21 July 1939: Adolf Eichmann is sent to Prague as director for Jewish emigration.

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’. Hitler watches a film titled 'Life Unworthy of Life', which had been commissioned by the Reich Health Leader, Leonardo Conti, which gave an overview of how disabled people lived.  The film's purpose was help pave the way for the country's euthanasia programme.  Martin Bormann requested that the film be made available in all German cinemas but Karl Brant opposed this position, arguing that the public may become alarmed. Hitler decided not to have it freely distributed.

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. Joachim von Ribbentrop dismisses Ciano’s protests and pleas and when 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. 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 its 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 these dates would cause Hitler problems for the Soviets already knew that Hitler had planned to invade Poland on the 26 August. The Reich Committee, which had been set up to prepare the way for the country's secret euthanasia programme by Karl Brandt and Philipp Bouhler, introduces a compulsory registration register for all handicapped newborn babies.

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. 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.

20 August 1939: Polish troops are rushed to the Polish-German border as international tensions 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 Göring sends a personal message to Halifax offering to come to England to discuss the situation. Chamberlain approves the meeting

22 August 1939: In London, Britain and France reaffirm their pledge to come to Poland’s aide if she is attacked. -  At Berchtesgaden, Hitler meets with the top echelons of the German military machine to discuss the on-coming military planning against Poland.  At this meeting, he tells his audience that ‘they must brace themselves to be remorseless against the foe, to be harsh and relentless’. For Hitler, this was to be a war of annihilation, he also informed them that he would use whatever means was necessarily to justify an invasion of Poland.

23 August 1939: Nazi Germany and the USSR sign a non-aggression pact. As part of the pact, there is a secret agreement included which allowed the two countries to partition a defeated Poland.  Stalin also agreed to hand over German Communists who had fled Nazi Germany to the East. Stalin promised to safeguard Germany's imports of raw materials and foodstuffs coming from the East.  The primary purpose of the Pact was to neutralise the Soviet Union as a potential threat when Germany invaded Poland and to keep his rear safe when Germany would have to attack the Western Allies. The world was stunned when it heard that Nazi Germany and Soviet Unions had signed a pact, considering Hitler's attitude towards Communism and the Soviet Union. 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 museums 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 Göring 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: The British government calls up their Army and RAF reserves and orders the mobilisation of the Royal Navy.  After receiving special orders from Reinhardt Heydrich and Heinrich Müller, Sturmbannführer (Major) Alfred Helmut Naujocks leads a small unit of SS (Schutzstaffel) men on an armed assault on a small German radio station at Gleiwitz within Upper Silesia, dressed as Polish soldiers. A German-Polish customs post and a forestry lodge are also attacked by other SS men also disguised as Polish soldiers. The Germans left behind dead concentration camp inmates dressed in Polish army uniforms in an attempt to prove Polish involvement and ensured that they could not be formally identified as concentration camp prisoners by having their faces smashed in beyond recognition. Also, as part of the German plan, 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.  With operation Hindenburg completed, the German army makes their last preparations for the invasion of Poland that is due to be launched within hours.