Timeline of 1918 - 1939
In January 1919, Anton Drexler founded the German Workers’ Party. This party was formed from a group who had previously met regularly to discuss political matters. The party met weekly in a beer hall in Munich. After the pressures of war Munich was politically unstable. People were inclined to support new ideas that advocated extreme change. Adolf Hitler became involved with the fledgling German Workers Party which he would later transform into the Nazi Party (NSDAP).
In the early days Hitler was surrounded by the unwieldy Sturmabteilung or SA, who were tough, unemployed ex-soldiers who frequented Munich beer halls such as the Torbräukeller. They were recruited by Ernst Röhm to protect Nazi speakers at public meetings. The Brownshirts, as they became known due the brown uniforms, were party supporters who acted as bodyguards. The term Sturmabteilung existed before the formation of the Nazi Party in 1919. Initially, it denoted the specialized assault troops of Imperial Germany during World War I, utilizing infiltration tactics and organized into small squads of a few soldiers each.
The 1st Party Day or 'Parteitage' held between January 27 and 29, 1923, with the slogan Deutschland Erwache. Two brigades of men marched through the city of Munich and Hitler spoke at all meetings declaring the swastika would be the national symbol of the future Germany.
Marinus van der Lubbe (13 January 1909 - 10 January 1934) was a Dutch communist who was tried, convicted, and beheaded by the Nazis for allegedly setting fire to the German Reichstag building on 27 February 1933. He was the first victim of the Nazis.
The Nazis exploited the fire to pass emergency legislation that abolished a number of constitutional protections and paved the way for Nazi dictatorship.
Former SA member, Hans-Martin Lennings, issued a statement to the notary in 1955 stating that he brought Marinus van der Lubbe to the Reichstag (ordered by Nazi parliamentarian and SA member Karl Ernst) on that evening in February 1933. When he arrived, the Reichstag was already burning. Therefore Marinus van der Lubbe could not have lit the building. This statement was only recently found in Hanover archives.
Van der Lubbe was given a posthumous pardon as the documents proved he could not have done it.
The Night of the Long Knives also known as the Röhm Purge or Operation Hummingbird (Aktion Kolibri), was a political purge in Nazi Germany from June 30 to July 2, 1934. During this event, Adolf Hitler encouraged to act by top officials Hermann Göring and Heinrich Himmler, ordered a wave of extrajudicial killings to strengthen his control over the Nazi Party and the German state. The main target was Ernst Röhm, leader of the Sturmabteilung (SA), the Nazi paramilitary group known as the “Brownshirts.” The purge also eliminated other perceived political rivals, consolidating Hitler’s absolute power.
Following the invasion of Poland, Operation Tannenberg was launched to eliminate Poland's political, military and intellectual leadership. The Einsatzgruppen, together with SS and police units, carried out systematic executions that claimed tens of thousands of lives. These killings marked the beginning of the Einsatzgruppen's role in mass murder during the Second World War.
Timeline of 1940
Timeline of 1941
Operation Barbarossa was the codename for Nazi Germany's invasion of the Soviet Union, launched on 22 June 1941. More than three million Axis soldiers crossed the border along a front stretching nearly 3.000 kilometres, making it the largest land invasion in history. Adolf Hitler expected a rapid victory, but fierce Soviet resistance, logistical problems and the harsh Russian winter transformed the campaign into a long and devastating war that ultimately contributed to the defeat of Nazi Germany.
As Operation Barbarossa began, four Einsatzgruppen followed the advancing German armies into the Soviet Union. Initially tasked with eliminating Communist officials, political commissars and other perceived enemies of the Nazi regime, their mission rapidly expanded into the systematic murder of Jewish men, women and children, becoming a central part of the Holocaust by Bullets.
On September 1, 1941, Reinhard Heydrich, (on the picture) Chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), mandated that all Jews in the Reich aged six and above wear a yellow Star of David on their chest. This yellow star-shaped badge bore the word "Jude meaning Jew" in the language of the respective country. For example, in the Netherlands, it read "Jood," while in France, it was "Juif.
The Japanese attack of the American Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Territory of Hawaii, began just before 08:00, on Sunday, December 7, 1941. The United States was a neutral country at the time. In the two hour raid that followed, 18 warships, 188 aircraft and around 2.000 servicemen were lost. Luckily, the 3 aircraft carriers of the fleet were all at sea at the time of the attack. The attack led to the United Sates together with Britain, declaring war on Japan.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt asks the US Congress to declare war on Japan following the previous day's surprise attack on Pearl Harbor. He spoke to the Congress: "Yesterday, December 7th, 1941, a date which will live in infamy, the United States of America was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces of the empire of Japan. The facts of yesterday and today speak for themselves. The people of the United States have already formed their opinions, and well understand the implications for the very life and safety of our nation. With confidence in our armed forces, with the unbounding determination of our people, we will gain the inevitable triumph so help us God. I ask that the Congress declare that since the unprovoked and dastardly attack by Japan on Sunday, December 7th, 1941, a state of war has existed between the United States and the Japanese empire."
Timeline of 1942
Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA), convenes the Wannsee Conference in a villa outside Berlin. At this conference, he presents plans to coordinate a European-wide “Final Solution of the Jewish Question” to key officials from the German State and the Nazi Party.
The "Final Solution" was the code name for the systematic, deliberate, physical annihilation of the European Jews. At some still undetermined time in 1941, Hitler authorized this European-wide scheme for mass murder.
The First Battle of El Alamein was a battle of the Western Desert Campaign of WW2, fought in Egypt between Axis forces of the Panzer Army Africa, which included the Afrika Korps under Field Marshal Erwin Rommel (right) and the Allied forces of the Eighth Army under the command of General Claude Auchinleck(left).
The Guadalcanal campaign, also known as the Battle of Guadalcanal and codenamed Operation Watchtower by American forces, was a military campaign fought between August 7, 1942 and 9 February 1943 on and around the island of Guadalcanal in the Pacific theater of World War 2. It was the first major land offensive by Allied forces against the Empire of Japan.
Nazi Germany and its allies unsuccessfully fought the Soviet Union for control of the city of Stalingrad in Southern Russia. The battle was marked by fierce close-quarters combat and direct assaults on civilians in air raids, with the battle being the epitome of urban warfare. It was the deadliest battle to take place during WW2 and is one of the bloodiest battles in the history of warfare, with an estimated 2 million total casualties. The victory at Stalingrad was huge moral boost for the Red Army and shifted the balance of power in the favour of the Soviets.
At Peenemünde, Germany the first launch of V-2 (German: Vergeltungswaffe 2, meaning 'Retaliation Weapon 2', with the technical name Aggregat 4 (A4) rocket is successful. The V2 rocket flies 147 kilometres wide and reaches a height of 84.5 kilometres and is therefore the first man made object reaching space in history.
The Second Battle of El Alamein was a battle that took place near the Egyptian railway halt of El Alamein. The First Battle of El Alamein and the Battle of Alam el Halfa had prevented the Axis from advancing further into Egypt. In August 1942, General Claude Auchinleck had been relieved as Commander-in-Chief Middle East Command and his successor, Lieutenant-General William Gott was killed on his way to replace him as commander of the Eighth Army. Lieutenant-General Bernard Montgomery was appointed and led the Eighth Army offensive. The British victory was the beginning of the end of the Western Desert Campaign, eliminating the Axis threat to Egypt, the Suez Canal and the Middle Eastern and Persian oil fields. The battle reboost the morale of the Allies, being the first big success against the Axis since Operation Crusader in late 1941. The end of the battle coincided with the Allied invasion of French North Africa in Operation Torch on 8 November, which opened a second front in North Africa.
Timeline of 1943
The Casablanca Conference (codenamed SYMBOL) or Anfa Conference was held at the Anfa Hotel in Casablanca, French Morocco, from January 14 to 24, 1943, to plan the Allied European strategy for the next phase of World War 2. In attendance were United States President Franklin D. Roosevelt and British prime minister Winston Churchill. Also attending were the sovereign of Morocco, Sultan Muhammad V, and representing the Free French forces, Generals Charles de Gaulle and Henri Giraud, but they played minor roles and were not part of the military planning. Soviet general secretary Joseph Stalin declined to attend, citing the ongoing Battle of Stalingrad as requiring his presence in the Soviet Union.
After six months of fierce fighting on land, sea and air, Guadacanal is taken by American forces. The campaign ended Japanese expansion plans and perhaps signified the turning point of the war in the Pacific theatre.
The United States General Dwight D. Eisenhower is selected to command the Allied armies in Europe.
German Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels gave a speech (also known as the Total War speech) at the Sportpalast in Berlin to a large, carefully selected audience on 18 February 1943, as the tide of World War 2 was turning against Nazi Germany and its Axis allies. The speech is particularly notable as Goebbels almost mentions the Holocaust, when he begins saying "Ausrotten" (extermination), but quickly changes it to Ausschaltung. (exclusion)
On March 13 to 14, 1943, SS and police carried out the operation, murdering around 2.000 Jews in the ghetto. The SS transferred another 2.000 Jews those capable of work to the Plaszow forced labor camp. The rest of the Jews were deported to the Auschwitz-Birkenau in two transports, arriving on March 13 and March 16. At Auschwitz-Birkenau, the camp authorities selected 549 persons from the two transports to be registered as prisoners. They others, approximately 2.450 people, were murdered in the gas chambers.
Lt. Jewell's crew release a body bearing false documents near the Spanish coast. Charles Cholmondeley and Ewen Montagu (picture) transported the body to Scotland on 17 April 1943. Later, the body washes up on the Spanish coast and is discovered by a local fisherman. They will go on to mislead the Germans about the site and timing of the Allied invasion of Sicily.
Admiral Karl Dönitz orders the majority of U-Boats to withdraw from the Atlantic because of heavy losses to new Allied anti submarine tactics. By the end of the month, 43 U-boats are lost, compared to 34 Allied ships sunk. This is referred to as "Black May".
Josef Mengele (32) comes to Auschwitz the extermination camp in Poland on May 24, 1943. The man who will quickly earn the nickname “the Angel of Death.” Born March 16, 1911, in Bavaria, Mengele studied philosophy under Alfred Rosenberg, whose racial theories highly influenced him. In 1934, already a member of the Nazi Party, he joined the research staff of the Institute for Hereditary Biology and Racial Hygiene.
The Battle of Kursk was a major Second World War engagement between German and Soviet forces on the Eastern Front near Kursk in the Soviet Union, during July and August 1943. The battle began with the launch of the German offensive Operation Citadel, on 5 July, which had the objective of pinching off the Kursk salient with attacks on the base of the salient from north and south simultaneously.
The Armistice of Cassibile was an armistice signed on 3 September 1943 and made public on 8 September between the Kingdom of Italy and the Allies during World War II, resulting in Italy joining the Allies and what the Germans believed to be the betrayal of Germany by Italy.
On 13 October, Pietro Badoglio and the Kingdom of Italy officially declared war on Nazi Germany. Badoglio continued to head the government for another nine months. On 9 June 1944, following the German rescue of Mussolini, the capture of Rome by the allies, and increasingly strong opposition to his government, Badoglio was replaced by Ivanoe Bonomi of the Labour Democratic Party
The second Schweinfurt raid, also called Black Thursday, was a World War II air battle that took place on 14 October 1943, over Nazi Germany between forces of the United States 8th Air Force and German Luftwaffe fighter arm (Jagdwaffe). The American bombers conducted a strategic bombing raid on ball bearing factories to reduce production of these vital parts for all manner of war machines. This was the second attack on the factories at Schweinfurt.
Operation Harvest Festival was the murder of 43.000 Jews at the Majdanek, Poniatowa and Trawniki concentration camps by the SS, Order Police battalions and Ukrainian Sonderdienst on 3 and 4 November 1943. After a series of Jewish uprisings in ghettos and extermination camps, Heinrich Himmler ordered the murder of the remaining Jewish forced laborers in the Lublin District of German-occupied Poland. Thousands of SS and police personnel arrived in Lublin on 2 November. SS and Police Leader Jakob Sporrenberg was in charge of the operation.
US President Franklin D. Roosevelt, British Prime Minister Winston Churchill and Soviet Leader Joseph Stalin meet in Tehran to discuss war strategy; (on 30 November they establish an agreement concerning a planned June 1944 invasion of Europe codenamed Operation Overlord). Stalin at last got the promise he had been waiting for.
US General Dwight D. Eisenhower becomes the Supreme Allied Commander in Europe. Three days later he was officially named head of Overlord, the invasion of Normandy and to lead the Allied Expeditionary Forces in the invasion of "Fortress Europe".
Timeline of 1944
The Leningrad-Novgorod strategic offensive was a strategic offensive during WW2. It was launched by the Red Army on January 14, 1944 with an attack on the German Army Group North by the Soviet Volkhov and Leningrad fronts, along with part of the 2nd Baltic Front, with a goal of fully lifting the siege of Leningrad. Approximately two weeks later, the Red Army regained control of the Moscow Leningrad railway, and on January 26, 1944 Joseph Stalin declared that the siege of Leningrad was lifted, and that German forces were expelled from the Leningrad Oblast.
Timeline of 1945
The army made a major advance into German held territory, capturing Kraków, Warsaw and Poznań. The Red Army had built up their strength around a number of key bridgeheads, with two fronts commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov and Marshal Ivan Konev. Against them, the German Army Group A, led by Colonel-General Josef Harpe, was outnumbered five to one. Within days, German commandants evacuated the concentration camps, sending the prisoners on their death marches to the west, where ethnic Germans also started fleeing.
In a little over two weeks, the Red Army had advanced 480 kilometres from the Vistula to the Oder, only 69 kilometres from Berlin, which was undefended. However, Zhukov called a halt, owing to continued German resistance on his northern flank (Pomerania), and the advance on Berlin had to be delayed until April.
The Battle of Berlin, designated as the Berlin Strategic Offensive Operation by the Soviet Union, and also known as the Fall of Berlin, was one of the last major offensives of the European theatre of WW2.
After the Vistula Oder Offensive of January and February 1945, the Red Army had temporarily halted on a line 60 km east of Berlin. On 9 March, Germany established its defence plan for the city with Operation Clausewitz. The first defensive preparations at the outskirts of Berlin were made on 20 March, under the newly appointed commander of Army Group Vistula, General Gotthard Heinrici.
Hitler marries his long time mistress and companion Eva Braun as she wanted to die as Mrs Hitler. In the picture Hitler and Eva Braun in ealier days in Berchtesagden with Hitler's dog a German Shepperd called Blondi.
Germany's first concentration camp Dachau, near München, is liberated by US troops of the 42nd and 45th Infantry Divisions and the 20th Armored Division.
Hitler and his wife Eva Braun commit suicide with a combination of poison and a gunshot. Before he dies, he dictates his last will and testament. In it Joseph Goebbels is appointed Reich Chancellor and Grand Admiral Karl Dönitz is appointed Reich President.
Heinrich Himmler by now was on the run. He disguised himself and carried false identity papers under the name of Sergeant Heinrich Hitzinger. He headed south on 11 May to Friedrichskoog, without a final destination in mind. They were stopped and detained at a checkpoint set up by former Soviet prisoners of war where he was recognized. Himmler was brought to the British 31st Civilian Interrogation Camp near Lüneburg, on May 23. When the doctor Wells examined him he saw a dark object in a gap in Himmler’s lower jaw. Suddenly Himmler bit on the cyanide capsule and was dead within 15 minutes.
The Nuremberg trials were held by the Allies against representatives of the defeated Nazi Germany, for plotting and carrying out invasions of other countries, and other crimes, in WW2. Between 1939 and 1945, Nazi Germany invaded many countries across Europe, inflicting 27 million deaths in the Soviet Union alone. Proposals for how to punish the defeated Nazi leaders ranged from a show trial (the Soviet Union) to summary executions (the United Kingdom). In mid-1945, France, the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom, and the United States agreed to convene a joint tribunal in Nuremberg, with the Nuremberg Charter as its legal instrument. Between 20 November 1945 and 1 October 1946, the International Military Tribunal (IMT) tried 21 of the most important surviving leaders of Nazi Germany in the political, military, and economic spheres, as well as six German organizations. The purpose of the trial was not just to convict the defendants but also to assemble irrefutable evidence of Nazi crimes, offer a history lesson to the defeated Germans, and delegitimize the traditional German elite.
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